Steam curator group ‘The Framerate Police’ is a group created by YouTube personality John Bain, or more known as TotalBiscuit. With over 52.000 subscribers just days after it’s creation, the group has according a single purpose: To simply inform the consumer if a game has a 30 frames per second lock on it, and if it can be modded to go above that.
The group makes no distinction on if the game in question will suffer greatly from the 30fps lock, or if it has very little noticeable effect, instead just focusing on getting the information to the consumer and letting them make the decision on whether to purchase the title.
This new group has been applauded by certain parts of the gaming community as steam by itself does not show any tags for any sort of fps lock.
Naturally it has also stirred up the now very old “Is 60fps objectively better?” debate again, which according to TotalBiscuit, yes without a question.
The Steam group has however also been blocked by certain developers, making the group’s recommendation not show up on their Steam page unless the user is subscribed to the group. This is supposedly to prevent the users from seeing that the game is locked to a lower framerate in the hope of not deterring sales.
Of course, this has struck a lot of gamers as dishonest and many gamers are interested in seeing what role the newly added Steam Refunds will play in the controversy. Will the developers be more up-front about the limitations of their products with negative reviews and refunds as a consequence to withholding that information?
Providing all the information and letting the consumer make an informed decision to purchase a title will however undoubtedly lead to happier consumers and a better game industry in the future.
