Even developers that make more than 1 game can't have minimum and recommended requirements to mean the same thing for all their games. Minimum could mean the below, or recommended could mean the below

720p low settings 30 fps with dips
720p low settings 30 fps
720p low settings 60 fps with dips
720p low settings 60 fps
720p med settings 30 fps with dips
720p med settings 30 fps
720p med settings 60 fps with dips
720p med settings 60 fps
720p high settings 30 fps with dips
720p high settings 30 fps
720p high settings 60 fps with dips
720p high settings 60 fps
1080p low settings 30 fps with dips
1080p low settings 30 fps
1080p low settings 60 fps with dips
1080p low settings 60 fps
1080p med settings 30 fps with dips
1080p med settings 30 fps
1080p med settings 60 fps with dips
1080p med settings 60 fps

Or any combination not mentioned above

Until Devs come to an agreement as to what minimum and recommended actually mean Steam could only do best guesswork and not very well.

If Steam states your system will play a game the results could be User A is happy with 720p low settings with dips below 30 but User B might deem that unplayable. Steam would get lots of backlash from user B and anyone else that feels the same and they'd likely want refunds.

Liability. To the customer:
Steam would have to offer much more loosened refund options if they overestimated the capabilities of your system setup, be it drivers, interfering software or just misjudged hardware.

Liability. To the publisher:
Steam would be liable for missed sales if they underestimated the capabilities of your system setup, be it outdated hardware lists, misjudging benchmark results or due to interfering software.

The system requirement info fields are form free text fields instead of static fields in which to add or select hardware components from.
Valve would have to have a perfectly written and ranked database in which components are compared and benchmarked, something no vendor, not even specialized sites that benchmark hardware, can provide accurately due to exotic outliers.

No, Valve wouldn't do that.

So I can use ultimate, master engineering skills to create a toaster capable of running this?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/351450/Scribble_Space/

Originally posted by Supafly:

Even developers that make more than 1 game can't have minimum and recommended requirements to mean the same thing for all their games. Minimum could mean the below, or recommended could mean the below

There is also the fact that there are performance differences for same component between different manufacturers. Then there are performance differences between similar computers due to software and drivers installed on each computer. In essence there is no way to tell 100% how a game performs in any single computer without trying it out though you should be able to at least get it to run decently in some settings if specs are at or above recommended specifications. And, ultimately, what that "running decently" means for each user is in the eye of beholder.