Valve quietly drops '4K at 60FPS' Steam Machine claim after reviewers struggle to hit the target

Valve has removed the "4K gaming at 60 FPS" promise from the official Steam Machine product page, replacing it with the softer "Up to 4K gaming with FSR 4.1". The change went live without any announcement and was spotted by users on X and the ResetEra forums on June 25. It follows a wave of launch reviews that found the hardware falling well short of that benchmark in demanding titles.

Reviewers from Linus Tech Tips to Digital Foundry broadly put Steam Machine performance in the same ballpark as a PS5 — capable of 60FPS or near-native 4K in most games, but rarely both at once. Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon 6 were among the titles that couldn't hit a consistent 60FPS without dropping to medium or lower settings, even with FSR upscaling active. Rock Paper Shotgun deputy editor James Archer, who handled the technical side of the review, put it plainly: treat the Steam Machine as a 1080p device. With enough upscaling on FSR Performance mode, major titles are playable — but the 4K 60FPS framing was always optimistic. Valve had been repeating that claim as recently as February, writing in a Steam FAQ that "the majority of Steam titles play great at 4K 60FPS with FSR on Steam Machine."

The Steam Machine itself is a living-room SteamOS box designed to bring a player's existing PC library — Steam and beyond — to the couch. Valve has been chasing that goal since Big Picture Mode in 2012, through the original third-party Steam Machines in 2015, and the Steam Link. This new machine is a far more polished and capable product than those early attempts, but it arrives at a difficult moment: GPU prices are historically high, and the base model starts at $1,049 (£879) for the 515GB version, climbing to $1,428 (£1,208) for the 2TB bundle with Steam Controller. Both Eurogamer and RPS reviewers found it genuinely lovable as a living-room device — discreet, well-engineered, and unlike anything else you can buy — while acknowledging the price is hard to swallow.

Valve has not explained why the wording was changed or when exactly the edit was made. Eurogamer says it has reached out to the company for comment. Community reaction has been predictably sharp — the machine was already sitting eighth on Steam's Wishlist charts, and the performance scrutiny has fuelled plenty of "dead on arrival" takes online, though reviewers across the board push back on that verdict. What happens next likely depends on whether Valve addresses the performance gap through driver or FSR updates, and how the price looks once Sony confirms what a PS5 will cost this holiday season.