It could be survey based. Heck, it could be coupon based. Something like:
1. Enroll is the discount program by running steam hardware survey. Steam holds onto your system specs.
2. Steam offers discounts for games that have insufficient benchmarks for your rough system.
3. For these games, steam collects performance data (either 5 minutes of benchmark before, during the game, first run, or maybe when the PC is idle (screensaver mode)).
There's all sorts of way they could do it. I'm guessing a large portion of people would be fine with a "Folding at home" style system, that just runs benchmarks for screensavers (with some coupons or whatever granted).
1. Enroll is the discount program by running steam hardware survey. Steam holds onto your system specs.
2. Steam offers discounts for games that have insufficient benchmarks for your rough system.
3. For these games, steam collects performance data (either 5 minutes of benchmark before, during the game, first run, or maybe when the PC is idle (screensaver mode)).
There's all sorts of way they could do it. I'm guessing a large portion of people would be fine with a "Folding at home" style system, that just runs benchmarks for screensavers (with some coupons or whatever granted).