The Steam Deck is considered by many fans to be the king of PC gaming handhelds. While Valve is miles away from seriously challenging Nintendo’s market position, and their own device can’t run all games on Steam, it still endures as one of the most popular devices in the category. It may very well be the best seller out of all of them, thanks to a combination of its early market lead, its now global distribution network, and the ease of use with SteamOS compared to Windows.
However, a new issue has emerged that Valve doesn’t seem to have had a good response to.
As reported by Kotaku, when Valve released the Steam Deck OLED, they made a special limited edition version of that console. The limited edition Steam Deck OLED came with special clear housing, matching the popular aesthetic of clear colored video game consoles in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The problem is that the clear casing seems to be prone to breaking. Kotaku found multiple reddit posts complaining that the casing broke, particularly around the screws.
As for Valve’s response, the testimonials from Deck owners on reddit seem mixed. Sometimes Valve goes all out to address the issue for their customers, and with some customers they don’t really do anything.
That may be because Valve considers if the users violated something related to their warranty, but this seems to be a widespread enough issue that the company should be considering a refund or recall of some sort.
Now, Valve has a more immaculate reputation than other video game companies, but this is something that could emerge to make them more trouble than is worth. Of course, game companies in general can see customer complaints for issues with their products, that can even go to litigation.
Case in point, when the straps for Nintendo’s WiiMote controllers broke, making those controllers go flying, Nintendo faced a class action lawsuit, all the way back in 2006. That lawsuit was dropped after Nintendo took action, by announcing a product recall and replacing everyone’s straps.
But, this isn’t a thing that always goes the consumer’s way. When Nintendo faced a more recent lawsuit for Joy-Con stick drift, that case was dismissed. The reasoning for the dismissal was that consumers had agreed to the EULA, but if other details were different, that outcome could have been different.
In both cases, the issue that decided each case was if Nintendo intended to sell a defective product not. If Valve’s customers ever decided to bring this OLED Deck issue to court, they should have to prepare for such arguments as well.
Valve could fix this all with a proper public response, and that’s why this issue emerging is so disappointing. But perhaps it’s precisely news coverage like this that could prompt them to take action.
