Back in June, the Bank of England raised its interest rates to a nice round five percent. It's a single number that tells a much wider story about the impact of Covid and Brexit on our economy. Often what we read in the news feels worrying in some abstract form - it's simply a loop that we can't close, some unwelcome chaos that's sufficiently distant from our observable world that it's gone again by the time we put our phone away. But this isn't that.
Our country's economic health affects just about everything in our observable world: the price of boiling the kettle while we check the news on our phone. The monthly tariff of the phone contract. The price of the tea bags. And thank you for bearing with me for this long while I get this thing touched down on the runway - the price of PC gaming. Which is the real kicker, obviously. We're all aware of and sensitive to those who are most vulnerable to economic fluctuations, but it's human nature that we notice national-scale phenomena like this most acutely when it starts to affect our leisure time. And from £79.99 standard editions on Steam to graphics cards that offer 35-year mortgage plans, the economic impact of our recent history has most certainly affected our shared interest.
With thoughts like this in my mind, I visited Steam's latest user hardware survey to see what it might reveal about the present situation. Valve's storefront and game library platform pulls system data from all consenting users periodically and releases a handy little report that shows what hardware specs everyone's actually using at the moment. Obviously it isn't limited to the UK, so we can't extrapolate the impact of the BoE's interest raise hike on Steam's survey, but neither is the economic situation of 2023 localised to British shores. We're all in it, everyone with a Steam account.
BRAVELY DEFAULT
Denne historien er fra October 2023-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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Denne historien er fra October 2023-utgaven av PC Gamer.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?