In case you’re out of the loop, the old Steam Deck had Philips screws that screwed into self-tapping plastic holes. This lead to occasional stripped threads and often stripped screwheads.
Valve absolutely did not have to change their screws, and its probably actually against their best interests. While other companies around the world are constantly in search of new ways to screw their own consumers, Valve goes out of their way to update their screws to make them easier to install/remove by changing to torx screws and added metal threads in the backplate. Those who know anything about mechanical engineering know this is not an insignificant amount of effort they put into it.
This is a small change that makes a huge impact, and speaks volumes about the ethos of the company. It says:
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We want to make our devices last longer, and be easier to repair.
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If you want to buy the cheaper tier and save yourself a few bucks by installing whatever SSD you want, go right ahead.
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We trust you to make decisions for yourself.
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Most importantly, we respect you, the consumer, and want you to fully own and control the devices we sell.
Valve is by no means perfect, and there’s plenty more they could be doing, but they’ve earned my respect and my patronage and I won’t buy games from anywhere else. I will buy whatever future products they sell, even if I don’t think I’ll use them regularly.
Less of a rant, more of a rave.
Cool upgrade for hobbiests.
Ya from the title I expected OP to be complaining because they don’t own a torx head screwdriver/bit.
Whoops. Unintentional clickbait.
Was expecting the same and I didn’t even know they switched to torx. Philips screws are bad. I go out of my way and spend extra money to avoid them.
Are rants inherently negative?
rant /rănt/ intransitive verb
- To speak or write in an angry or emotionally charged manner; rave.
- To express at length a complaint or negative opinion.
My b
Nah, definition 1 right there isn’t inherently negative. It’s certainly more involved than otherwise necessary and seems somewhat driven by emotion, so while it skips the negative connotation I think this counts plenty well.
I think of a rant more as a long-winded statement that most people would agree with. Sort of a “off my chest” kinda thing.
By definition, no, but most people probably assume negativity when they hear the word rant.
When Gaben dies there will be fucking riots.
While other companies around the world are constantly in search of new ways to screw their own consumers
You bastard, take that upvote.
I read the title with that connotation. Was actually looking forward to hearing a valid complaint of the steam deck but Surprise!
I can already hear my business administration professor scream that everyone in the free market tries to screw each other from that statement lol. Why yes of course, money. Planned obsolescence is the only logical choice, people! I bet nobody will source old, but durable products and repair them instead, no no. That’ll never happen!
As someone who used to run a louis rossman electronics repair business for a couple years before i burned out.
LG G5 was and still is my point to for perfectly fixable devices.
Motorola is trash because you have to dismantle the phone from the back layer by layer just to reach the front screen.
HTC was even worse with two tier motherboards and octopuss ribbon cables were a nightmare to navigate.
iPhone was/ is possibly the easiest fucking phone to fix, ironically…however by the iphone 8 and onwards apple found increasingly shitty ways to make 3rd party repairs nearly impossible.
windows phones, nokia, and others were hit or miss. tablets were long winded affairs but generally easy due to their inherent size.
ive been out of the game since 2019 when covid dropped. id really like to hear the inside baseball on any current operators running repair business.
i used Repair Shopr software to manage my customers. idk if thats still the go to or if another has bested it.
When I couldn’t repair my Nokia and replace the 5 € USB-Port because there happened to be a small crack in the screen (of course you have to remove the glued on screen to accese the innards), I caved and bought a Fairphone 3.
Worst decision ever. The stupid thing refuses to break to let me even use the better repairability.
Good to hear, got a Fairpone 5 recently and I’m very happy with it so far.
Although breaking it probably won’t take more than a year for clumsy me.
Honestly, I think I’ve never dropped a phone as much as this one. And apart from a few scratches there’s nothing. I think it’s the battery cover that usually just pops off like on the indestructible Nokia phones of decades past.
Really funny how I can use Nokia as both a positive and a negative example.
I manage to break 2 usb conectors in 1 year.
Any opinions on Samsung or Google?
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Just in case you were wondering, Motorola is still trash. I bought the G5 and I absolutely hate it.
I wonder if the decision has anything to do with selling refurbished units. It’s a good change, glad to see this!
Almost definitely. When they did the initial release, it could have easily been a flop, and if it was a flop, it would have been pointless to have gone in planning to repair and sell refurbished units. Now that sales are showing its a hit, they are taking the time to invest in changes for more long-term support.
Self-tapping screws made sense for a product in an entirely new product category without knowledge if it would be successful or not. Torx screws that slide into metal threads makes a lot more sense for what is expected to be a product with long shelf-life.
The only thing is, the refurb market can’t be that great to pay for this change. You might not think it, but changing to better screws and adding the metal threads is crazy more expensive.
Crazy more expensive for raw profits - per unit, it’s basically negligible.
You could say this if s consumer focused effort to achieve market share or sell more games, but I choose to believe this if just what happens
Personally, I think this is just what happens when you have an employee run tech company. They lose out on like 0.05% profits, but more then make up for it through game sales and reputation
I mean realistically, this is probably a few cents a unit. Across hen million units, that’s real money. But quality pays over time. They lose out on quarterly profits, but they don’t worry about that bs - they’re not publicly traded, and they’ll make way more on a 5 year timespan
Parts are cheap, new tooling for different moulds and an extra processing step is not though!
Fair point, although I’d argue that this is probably a cheap and standard extra step
Molds and turn around time are definitely expensive… But much cheaper if you wait until the next version that probably will have different mount points for the newer internals
I’m not saying this isn’t worth praising, I’m just saying this is exactly what integrity and giving your employees autonomy looks like. You come back for version 2, and you take your lessons learned, you explore the improvements that you thought up during the last version
It’s just basic craftsmanship, but that has unfortunately been smothered in most places these days. You have to be big enough for this to be an R&D effort you can afford to fail, but small enough no one has bought you up to wring you for value
Yeah I haven’t even made an account on Epic to get free games from there. Valve almost single handedly made Linux a viable gaming platform and I’m grateful for that (I know wine has existed far longer than proton, but the difference before and after proton is day and night).
Even before Proton Valve was heavily invested in Linux gaming.
SteamOS has been around way longer than Proton, and the Steam Client had a native Linux version for such a long time, I don’t even remember when it was published. Also, the Steam Linux Runtime is something worth mentioning - it is a common base that game developers can target instead of the various different distributions.
Torx screws and threaded inserts is not really that much effort engineering side.
It has more significant impact on the cost. Millions of torx screws and threaded inserts cost more than self tapping Phillips into plastic.
It’s almost like Valve doesn’t absolutely hate their customers.
Strange how a company with infinite money just produces stuff they like huh?
Every company should try that.
Look at the shit Apple produces and understand it is not only a function of money.
Steam is an infinite money generator, yes, but any publicly owned company would have fucked it up for short term profits. Valve absolutely has its problems, but its focus on the long term and respecting its customers means it can make infinite money and do stuff like this.
Yeah, the OG Steam Deck video before it even released made very clear that the original run was made with self-tapping screws, which meant that disassembly and re-assembly was always going to result in a less firm and tight re-assembly because the holes have already been tapped once.
It was honestly my personal biggest complaint considering it seemed otherwise like they were aiming to support self-repair. Very refreshing to see they changed tack to a costlier option for the sake of their customers. Very true, companies rarely do this out of the goodness of their hearts, and Valve is an unusual company.
I consistently pray for shareholders never getting their deathgrip on Valve
Made by hardware hackers for hardware hackers.
Turns out i’m gonna buy a steamdeck with them using linux and thinking of things like this.
I just need to wait a bit as the most expensive season is around the corner, i’m just glad our Dutch black friday doesn’t outdo any regular discount making it a near necessity to wait for black friday.
Are people continually opening their steam decks? I am confused at the opportunity to have stripped screws and dethreaded holes.
Some people are, yes. For modifications, mostly.
I can understand wanting mods, but at the same time, it’s not like you can open your iPhone without damaging it in the process. I guess I want to say that I can get why people would want to add stuff to their thing, but I don’t see why someone would expect Valve to have accounted for that.
You’re missing the point of this post… They specifically made a change to make it easier to open and put back together without damage, which is not the norm in most related industries these days. That’s a good thing that we have been conditioned not to expect because of companies like Apple that fully do not want you to open your device ever for any reason.
Your comment sounds like “well you can’t open an iPhone without damaging it, why should you be able to open a steam deck without damaging it”… Very much corporate overlord shill vibes.
“Corporate shrill”. Why was it necessary to make it personal?
My point is that you can’t expect companies to do good things. Valve seems to be an exception.
Also you have to admit that the title frames it like a complaint. Top post points this out
Thats OP’s point? Valve has gone above and beyond what’d be reasonable to expect?
When I get my new OLED the first thing I will do is crack it open and swap the SSDs. Partly because the other one has all my data on it and it be an eternity to move it over and partly because the old one has already been swapped for a 1TB.
People ITT: it’s called ranting and raving!
Why Robertson heads are only popular in Canada I’ll never understand.
Y’all missing out.
I mean, you got my upvote already, but one big reason is that Robertson wanted to control all the manufacturing of the screws and the bits. Phillips licensed his patent out and let anyone make them just taking a tiny licensing fee. Made a fortune on volume. Robertson: good engineer, bad businessman.
Canadians are saying ‘Y’all’ now?
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Alberta has entered the chat
Because hexagonal screw drives are superior, they can transfer more torque and last longer. What I don´t get is why slotted, cruciform and square screw drives are even still around when there are much more reliable alternatives to choose from, like Hex and Torx for example.
