New game has such high system requirements that, according to Steam, only a few players can play in high detail and 60 FPS

With Alan Wake II, a new game will soon be launching in the Epic Store. However, some users have now compared the system requirements with the data on Steam and say: Hardly anyone will be able to enjoy the game at high details.

Alan Wake II was one of the biggest games at gamescom 2023 and will be released on October 27, 2023. A game that many are waiting for. However, many players are currently discussing not the gameplay, but the incredibly tough system requirements.

Because they already exclude many users and others can hardly play Alan Wake II at high details.

Alan Wake relies on DLSS, already needs a mid-range graphics card for medium details

What does this have to do with Steam? Although Alan Wake II is only distributed through the Epic Store, players use on reddit to compare the official data from Steam. This is because Steam conducts a so-called hardware survey every month: Here, it is evaluated which hardware players have installed in their computers. The numbers usually provide a good overview of the average players and show what hardware they are playing with:

• The used graphics cards are indicated in percentages. “High End” is rather underrepresented, and most players are in the middle range.
• The vast majority of graphics cards come from Nvidia, AMD is repeatedly represented, and Intel mainly appears with the integrated graphics chip from some processors.

What’s the problem? Even the minimum system requirements are not trivial and already require an RTX 2060 or an RX 6600. These graphics cards cost between 200 and 300 euros.

If you want to play the game “only” in Full HD with high details, then you already need a very fast graphics card. About GeForce RTX 4070 or an RX 7800 XT. Especially the 12 GB video memory surprises many. But there are still other points:

• Alan Wake II no longer supports many older graphics cards, as they do not support Mesh Shaders. This means that all players using a GPU from the Radeon RX 5000 series or those using the very popular GTX 1060 are excluded.
• Many older GPUs do not support DLSS, which is assumed by the developers for good performance. Some players already jokingly say that they do not want to know how the game will look natively in Full HD.

Especially very popular graphics cards, such as the Radeon RX 580, the GTX 1650, or the GTX 1660, fall through the cracks here. However, these are also graphics cards that are in a large majority of PCs:

• The GTX 1650 comes in at around 5% of all users.
• The GTX 1060 is at around 4.7% of all players.
• AMD’s RX 580 accounts for about 1.1%.

The most popular graphics card on Steam, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (6.5% of all users) should at least handle the game at minimum and medium details.

Others just shake their heads and believe, that one only bought an RTX 4090 for 1,700 euros to be able to play maximally in Full HD with 60 FPS today. Meanwhile, Nvidia marketed the graphics card as a 4K graphics card.

Where do the mentioned 7% come from? The 7% are a combination of all graphics cards from the Steam statistics that should be able to run the game effortlessly.

Alan Wake 2, system requirements without raytracing, with DLSS/FSR enabled:

More about hardware and tech

1

Player exploits seller’s pricing error coldly, pays less than 100 euros for 32 GB of RAM

von Benedikt Schlotmann

2

If you downloaded the wrong game on Steam a year ago, look for the FBI now – And yes, Valve emphasizes, this is the real FBI

von Dariusz Müller

Dissatisfaction among PC gamers is growing, many are far from thrilled with the situation

What is the current situation in PC gaming? Anyone wanting to play current or modern titles needs a powerful gaming PC. Games like Starfield have high system requirements and demand powerful hardware. While they can also be started with weak hardware, many players do not want to forgo details or features.

Moreover, many games are released with major issues or poorly optimized. The current example here is Cities: Skylines 2, which is struggling with major performance problems.

Games like Alan Wake II, which set very high requirements, raise concerns that soon only a small minority will be able to enjoy games in high details. All others will sooner or later be unable to afford PC gaming or will have to switch to a gaming console.

Players believe: PC gaming will soon be unaffordable – Do many have to start playing on a PS5 or Xbox soon?