There have been some major PC games released these past couple of months. In February, we got Helldivers 2, Pacific Drive, and Sons of the Forestcame out of Early Access. This month, it’s been Dragon’s Dogma 2 and the PC-port of Horizon Forbidden West that have garnered all the headlines. They’re as varied as you can get, in terms of performance, gameplay, and features.

But they all have one thing in common and that’s ‘system requirements’—a list of PC components the publishers claim are needed as a minimum or ones that they recommend. The time I’ve recently spent testing the performance of Dragon’s Dogma 2 (as well as Pacific Drive, Sons of the Forest, and Horizon Forbidden West, just because I wanted to) has reminded me an awful lot of developers know very little about PC hardware and although this is something I’ve know about for a long time, and experienced first hand, it’s still a surprise that the industry hasn’t got better at this.