Valve first came up with the Steam Hardware Survey more than 20 years ago because it wanted to know what specs it should target for Half-Life 2
The first public Steam Hardware Survey came in April 2003, but there were private antecedents used by Valve earlier.
Valve zoomed in Half-Life 2's FOV from the gold standard 90 so you could see all those pretty Source engine faces better
"In Half-Life 1, we used a 90-degree field of view, or FOV, which was fairly standard for first-person shooters at the time.