It's fine to require newer hardware but the game has to justify it. You can't have a game that looks like Starfield and claim it needs a high end system to run when games like BG3 and Cyberpunk also exist.

Yeah... No. I agree that people will always bitch about shit, but Starfield released with many optimization issuses worth bitching about. Such as flatout bad memory allocation (causing it to misalign with the CPU page size), an incorrect imlementation of DirectX12's ExecuteIndirect feature causing major issues with GPU's, and some insanely stupid choices regarding basic customization features (why do you have to change the resolution of your desktop to play the game in full screen at your desired resolution ffs!?).

If it was a case of the game being so cutting edge it needed top of the line hardware that would be one thing. But frankly it was just so poorly optimized that they hoped top of the line hardware would mitigate their quality control issues.

Thank Vivec for modders at least, as this has been Bethesda's MO for decades.