Steam Deck question: how good is the warranty, really?
I'm a new Deck owner, recieved unit in May and played sparingly for the past 2ish months.
Overall really liking it, gushed about it everywhere to everyone, and big fan of Valve. But two days ago, one of the Deck shoulder buttons stopped working suddenly. Reached out to steam and they're having me send it in, which is what I would expect. But the way they phrased it kind of souring my initial high of owning the Deck:
Based on the information you have provided, we believe it is unlikely that the current issue reflects a problem with this device as it was delivered to you. It may instead be related to your particular use of the product. Regardless, we would like to offer complimentary service as a gesture of goodwill.
So it's one of those kinds of warranty that excludes regular use? Is this one rep just awkwardly placing blame on me or is that their overall vibe? In contast, I have PS1, PS2, xBox original/360 controllers that still have all the shoulder buttons functioning normally, along with super old PSPs, DS, DS Lites, 3DS, Switch'es and none of them have failed aside from the infamous Switch drifts. Nintendo, for their part, fixed the drifts without implying it was my fault.
Anyone else dealt with Valve customer service and warranty?
Here is the full text, which is pretty bog standard.
In your case, I think they're specifically avoiding saying that this is a materials/workmanship defect as described for potential liability reasons. I wouldn't read too much into the specific wording unless the issue doesn't get resolved.
Personally, it does sound like you got unlucky as mine is still going strong.
I've not needed their hardware support, but their software support has wavered between 'acceptable' and 'outstanding,' which is a breath of fresh air sadly.
That's what I'm hoping for, for others can chime in with positive experiences dealing with an unfortunate RMA (Return merchandise authorization). I'm hoping that I'm just reading it with over-sensitivity. It makes sense they're covering their own butts, and to me they've got a lot of goodwill on their side still. So, hopefully that's all there is.
worst case scenario, Valve has been very good about helping folks with out of warranty units repair their own.
No joke: the shoulder button on my original Deck also stopped working.
I bought the OG Steam Deck back in the summer of 2022. After about a year of (admittedly heavy) use, the right shoulder button stopped working entirely, and the battery life cratered (it would go through a full charge in roughly 5-10 minutes without a game even playing).
I coddle and protect my Steam Deck like it’s a child, so I’m certain nothing I did caused these issues — like you said, I’ve had plenty of controllers whose buttons have worked for years.
I messaged Valve support and they said it was out of warranty (which it was), but that I could ship it to have it repaired at cost. I think they quoted me somewhere in the range of $150-$200.
I considered the value proposition of repairing my old hardware versus getting the newer version, and I realized that I play my Deck enough that I would definitely get my money’s worth out of a new one. So, I sprung for an upgrade to the OLED.
An upside to this was that I could now permanently dock the old one to my TV. I play it with a controller, and it’s constantly plugged in, so the shoulder button and battery are no longer an issue for me with it. Cloud saves mean I can hop between my devices pretty fluidly — it’s actually very nice and an unintentional upside of the hardware dying.
It is a little frustrating that I had to buy two Decks inside of two years, but I also know that it’s a hazard of being an early adopter of any new tech. Also, I love my Decks so much that I’m willing to overlook a lot of their sins.
Finally, as a counterpoint, I did have to RMA one of the base stations for my Index, and that was a perfectly fine support experience. No issues, and they replaced it with a working one promptly.
If only you lived here, you'd have been able to enjoy the minimum legally mandated warranty period of two years!
Portugal, right?
My husband is Portuguese, so I can’t say I haven’t considered it!
If you ever move here I'll be happy to buy you guys dinner someday!
I'm ashamed to admit I don't know if the 2 year period applies reliably across all of the EU or if there are variations. Usually these things are EU-wide but not always.
That’s very sweet of you! ❤️
I think the actual RMA experience will go well in my case as well. That's a little worrying that the hardware itself may not be as sturdy as other consoles and controllers ...but like you said, early adopter tech and all :/
In fairness, I bought a launch Steam Deck and since it's been delivered with heavy use, only three weeks ago did my left stick develop drift.
Inversely, a tech that should be considered at a 'robust' stage, the Switch OLED and Switch Lite both developed drift within months of use. (I know it's the same part that they never fixed.)
So, it's not early adopter tech anymore! It's just 'tech'. Even 'good' tech or tech that should have no excuses at this point will, or will soon, fail!
No, the 360 and PS3 was, in my opinion, the beginning of the end. Even Nintendo products, which used to be fabled for their robustness (Desert Storm Gameboy), are rife with mechanical defects. I don't know why hardware is so prone to defect these days, complexity or sensitivity or general enshittification, I dunno but I'd argue that the Steam Deck is at least as reliable as other consoles and controllers. Just that nothing is reliable these days.
This is not an excuse of Valve but a general condemnation of the industry.
I'm honestly really annoyed that everyone uses resistive joysticks. Those are the ones with drift problems. Magnetic joysticks are not super expensive parts; Sega used them on their standard Dreamcast controller as well as their Saturn 3D pad. There has been magnetic joysticks used in the context of video games since at least I, Robot In 1984. Magnetic joysticks can also be mechanically simpler, so they are less likely to physically break. Just look at the circuit board in a dreamcast controller; it's just a simple flat board with tiny surface-mount components to measure magnetic flux, while the joystick and triggers are just simple plastic bits with a magnet and a spring.
Man, I miss my old Dreamcast. That thing was wonderous, and I feel about it nearly as fondly as Isekai Uncle does. I hope my Dreamcast borrowing ex is still enjoying it after all this time. (R, If you're reading this, I'm still waiting to get it back from you)
The internals of the Switch Joycons look pretty cheap, lots of thin plastic guides and supports. The shoulder buttons are just plastic hinged levers with a spring you might find in a mechanical pencil on one end, and a post to push a pretty normal looking push button in the middle. The ribbon routing is fairly impressive though.
Valuable data point. Hoping for it coming back in good robustness and some longevity.
Probably part of the problem is that the places that make the most basic parts themselves have gotten enshittified, such that even if you were to honestly try and source the best bits for a best thing, you simply can't.
I hadn't heard about Desert Storm Gameboy before, but I remember my old Nokia 3310 and I believe it, too, could survive deployment and a fire.
Taobao + WeChat or Google photo translate + Chinese forwarder and you can find pretty much anything you want.
That was my first initial impression. I heard all the praise for the steam deck, bought a new oled version. I quite like it, but it is definitely a standard below my PS5 controllers or desktop peripherals in build quality. Nothing bad per se, just little things that surprised me.
Yeah, I might just do what @kfwyre did and mainly dock it, play with a controller.
The Dualsense is quite nice but, and I know this much is personal, I don't like the hand feel compared to the third party or Switch offerings. Same with the 8Bitdo Ultimate controllers it feels as if the controller is shaped sloping away from my fingers, like if I loosen my grip it'll fall forward away from me.
I don't pretend to be an expert on ergonomics or anything but the 8bitdo Pro 2 and the Switch Pro are my 'favorite' controllers of this generation. Both are beaten out these days by my Steam Deck usage but I have the Mechanism Kickstand so I can hold the Deck at a better angle.
I got the OG Steam Deck and had to RMA it (some issue with the battery that caused it to crash after varying amounts of play, only occurred on some early models) and they were incredibly flexible once I went through the troubleshooting steps with them to rule out other fixable issues. They even shipped my replacement to my German address despite my original Steam deck having been ordered to my old US address, which they didn't need to do but saved me a load of trouble.
My first Deck had a sound issue that appeared after a few weeks. It went as well as it could, and took less than a week between my initial support request, the usual factory reset, and the reception of the RMA ticket.
I might say that as much as I like my Deck, the build quality is really meh.
Mine has pretty much been a tank. But I have heard a lot of people who have had problems with it so perhaps their QC is lacking. But it's hard to tell since there were some well-known bugs with the early hardware (especially in regards to fan noise).
I can't saymuch about warranty service. My Steam Dec runs perfectly fine. It developed drift on left stick at the end of two year warranty (EU) but instead of sending it in, I bought hall effect sticks. From what I remember reading whe SD launched, Valve is quite chill about it and probably won't give you any trouble. I believe they are one of not so many companies left who actually care about their customers.
EDIT: When the drift started I had very likely around 1000 hours clocked in. The stick lasted for quite some time.
How's your experience been with the hall sensors? They sound fantastic except for the square input area
On the Switch they are good. Also on drone controllers. They should honestly just be standard on anything with a joystick.
I have never thought about it and just play. If the input area is square it certainly doesn't bother me when playing. Otherwise the experience is... yes, I have analog sticks, they work. I went into deadzone setting now and left stick shows square area with rounded corner on top-left, both botto, but sharp angle at top right. Given these are far outside the circular area where I suppose Steam Deck reads actual input to handle it to the game, I don't care.
Calibration was not easy as you would need three hands to do it easily, but since then, I could tighten the deadzone, but I will probably go back to default simply because now I can register movement even before I overcome (or even come close to) spring tension of the stick. Simply put - character on the screen moves before I even get haptic feedback (feel stick pressing against my input). In American truck simulator, for example, I may drive off the road while I just have my thumb resting on the stick thinking I'm not moving it at all. If I set default deadzone, I have to overcome the spring before it registers - you know by feel in your thumb that you have moved the stick. I hope it's understandable what I'm trying to say.
EDIT: I have GuliKit SD02 sticks.
There is another brand, ElecGear, that makes Hall effect sensors for the steam deck that don’t have the square dead zone issue. I have those and they have been fantastic.
In my case, the rep was very clear my Deck's broken shoulder button isn't even covered under warranty. The credit card with which I used to purchase this gives an additional two years warranty, but that's all moot if Steam will even deny coverage not three months into use. I had expected a bit better of Valve to be honest.
Well, I have expected more too.
I know it won't help anything but at the very least they made it very fixable and offer parts. If you are handy, you could probably fix it yourself for decent price.
Very good to know :) and yes hopefully they've accounted for this and made the system hardware as easy to tinker with as their software.
I have changed my analog sticks for hall effect ones and it was a breeze. I am quite experienced at taking things apart though. And sometimes when I put them back together they even work!
Speaking as a technician who's fixed his own Deck after it took an amazing, butthole-puckering dive down an oaken staircase: yes, the hardware is remarkably easy to fix, even for a novice. The only reservations I have are about screen and battery replacements, as those use adhesives, which even experienced technicians can have difficulties with. I haven't personally worked on those components in my Deck, but I have heard from others that they aren't as difficult to work on as I initially feared. That's very much secondhand info though, so take it with a large lamp's-worth of Himalayan rock salt.
I'll have to ping you for help a year from now if I need a part replaced :)
How did yours survive falling down stairs without the screen breaking???!!
No clue, but I was very impressed, as you can imagine. I can still recall with crystal clarity how time seemed to slow down as I watched it tumble end over end and crash down onto a tile floor. Only one of the shoulder buttons and the opposite trigger broke, and only the plastic of the buttons themselves. That's all. Still works a treat to this day, maybe two years later.
The triggers can be a bit fiddly to replace because of the way the springs are seated, but nothing a little patience can't handle. I do have some suggestions on tools you'll probably want if you do need to work on your device, but there's nothing that iFixit themselves (Valve's chosen repair partners) don't recommend in their walkthroughs. They really did go the extra mile in regards to self-service for these things.
PS: I'm forever saying in these comments that I'm happy to help anyone who asks in fixing their gizmos. I'm actually a little surprised you of all people don't have me mentally tagged as "that weirdo who keeps offering help fixing Steam Decks."
The other site has a tool called RES, an enhancement suite tool that I did use to tag folks. Is there a similar thing for Tildes? I'm for sure tagging you as "Steam Deck epic stairwell fall hardware fixing guy"
It was actually because of another of your comments about the Deck and how you found it end user friendly to work with, that I pulled the right trigger and bought the Deck.
I'm a gremlin: things are always falling right out of my hands or off desks or from pockets :/ my current phone I'm typing this on has a huge cracked screen, one of the keyboard only sort of works, one of my wireless mice somehow stopped working yesterday, and I have a series of e-wastes small home appliances laying about that I feel too guilty to throw out -..-
Tildes ReExtended has you covered there.
Yay! Thank you~
Thank you @Bauke and @cfabbro for making Tildes ReExtended :)
Tag @Promonk pssst you can tag me now :D
@Bauke deserves absolutely all the credit. He did, and continues to do all the work. I just did a bit of early testing and provided some feedback.
"Terminally online tech gremlin." Got it. ;)
Awesome 😎 *single tear~
No, I don't know of any way to actually tag people, yet. It would be nice, though. I'm sure I'm regularly interacting with the same people here all the time, but my dumb brain only remembers a handful of handles, like yours and kfwyre's. I think I only remember the two of you because your names are either direct references to or remind me of videogames. That, and I see you two commenting all the time, of course.
Prior to my last job, I worked in e-waste recycling. There's almost certainly an e-cycler in your area who would take your stuff for free, as many will only charge for large volumes. You might be lucky and have a Free Geek or some other non-profit outreach and e-cycling org in your area.
You might also try opening some of your defunct gizmos up and seeing if there's anything obviously the matter with them. That's more or less how I got started as a tech. The phone is almost certainly held together with adhesives, so is probably beyond a novice's ability, but you might be surprised how many devices I've opened up to see what the matter is, only to find nothing, put it back together and find that I've somehow fixed it. It used to happen pretty regularly when I was in e-cycling.
Anyway, I'm glad my comment helped inform your decision. I try to be objective about the quality of the devices I've worked on, but that's kind of difficult in the case of the Deck. Its full of little things that repair guys like me love, like standard fasteners, modular design, and a relative lack of adhesives. Hell, just the fact that the OEM has partnered with iFixit to supply parts direct to consumers is crazy significant. I hope Valve can stave off the inevitable encrappening and continue to show other companies how its done, because we certainly need more of them to be friendly to repair. We can't keep making disposable devices in the name of corporate profit forever.
:| ........ Yes.... Ahem! Yes, I would love a tag feature on Tildes.
One of the only times I did, opened up my 3DS, and the first thing that happened was a ribbon snapped. -..-
There's a crappy veggie dehydrator I opened up and couldn't see anything obviously burnt or anything, put it back and it still doesn't work. The fan blows but there's no heat. How do you get spare parts for stuff? Amazon is a wasteland of fake bits and garbage listings
That's one reason why iFixit is such a blessing. Their parts are always top-notch. They're the only vendor I know of who guarantees 0-cycle mobile device batteries, which used to be a bigger deal back before all the OEMs made their phones IP6/7 compliant, coincidentally making their very expensive gadgets extremely difficult to repair.
Outside of them, I've mostly purchased from recyclers on eBay. I look for established vendors with good reviews for customer service and roll the dice. I've been lucky that I've only had a couple of bad experiences so far, and those were resolved with RMAs in fairly short order.
Okay I might ping you for "does this one look like a scam" if I want to try fixing a few things >:)
Also, I apologize if I made you uncomfortable. That was certainly not my intention.
I'm an old netizen from back in the Web 1.0 days. I don't see anything wrong with engaging in a community you find thoughtful and respectful. Actual connections with people is the GOOD part of the Internet, after all. It's a shame that corporate rent-seeking and bad actors have made being an active member of an online community into something people feel vaguely embarrassed about.
:) aww not at all, just made me realise I should probably be online less rofl it's nice to be noted, hopefully in neutral to positive light :D so far I really like the Tildes community and I was pretty tickled about @Akir self referencing Tildes on the Tildes niche hobby thread's comment. Hopefully I'm one of those included :)
You are definitely a premium loser in my books. :)
But I've been commenting so much lately I fear I'm probably the biggest loser of us all....
In addition to being able to tag our favourite users, maybe there can be a running tally of most.... comments or words typed each week 🙈 no no no no.....
I had an issue with the power button and it was easily resolved within a couple weeks.
Just throwing this out there, when the warranty does expire, fixing buttons yourself generally isn't too hard if you can find replacements, and if the buttons aren't soldered to the main board (you might have to buy a button that is attached to a sub-board and then replace the whole sub-board + button).
I just replaced some Switch joycons that were drifting with Gulikit Hall Effect joysticks, took maybe an hour. Just watch out for random button springs shooting off into the distance, don't want to lose those.
I've performed 5 warranty replacements of Index controllers. Doesn't matter what they say, they always replaced them. No issues.
(Based on the amount of RMAs, as you might expect, I'm not surprised the Deck's build quality also has some issues.)
I can't speak to the steam deck warrenty (haven't had problems with mine) but I've had two separate instances with my valve index where the scensors had some problem (as indicated by the red light) outside of warranty and they replaced it no questions asked
@Protected said the same thing about out of warranty help, I think, that's really good to hear :)
If it helps, on two occasions, they actually sent the new controllers first and asked me to return the old ones after the new ones arrived, so I wouldn't have to go without. Worst I can say about steam support is that each message takes about two days until they get to it but otherwise, great experience.