Valve Gets ‘Right To Repair/Mod’ Right With The Steam Deck
from the deck-the-halls dept
We’ve talked a great deal about the public’s right to repair the tech they own and how right to repair has finally started to shift in favor of the consumer as of late. In tech in general, and specifically in the video gaming hardware space, manufacturers have long fought to make it impossible for the public to repair their own gear. Or mod that gear, as well. And this isn’t just a Nintendo thing, though that’s likely the first name that leapt into your mind. Sony, Microsoft, ASUS, and HTC all lobbied heavily to prevent DIY repairs or mods.
But then there’s Valve and its new handheld device, the Steam Deck. Valve appears to have gone completely the opposite way, both in making the Steam Deck very easy to get into to begin with, but also allowing some major names out there to sell repair parts or upgrades directly to the public.
As reported by The Verge over the weekend, the legendary repair advocates over at iFixit.com plan to offer essentially every part of the Steam Deck for sale, including the motherboard with its custom AMD chip. While word of this was undoubtedly exciting for Steam Deck fans, iFixit took to Twitter to state that the news was a little bit premature and that a full reveal of its replacement parts offerings is yet to come.
As Kotaku notes, to get the full scope of what it means to have a company like iFixit saying it’s working directly with Valve on repair and mod parts, you have to couple that with Valve’s forward-thinking approach to the schematics of its Steam Deck design. By that I mean to point out that Valve simply released the design files for the handheld console via a Creative Commons license.
When you combine this with the fact that Valve—much as it did for its now-departed Steam Controller (RIP, my darling)—has made the CAD files for the Steam Deck available under a Creative Commons license, and designed the machine to be remarkably modular in comparison to other controllers and portables, it’s hard not to be impressed and inspired by the potential for this machine to become a gold standard for user repairability in the video game space.
Here we see yet another example of a company being willing to give up just a bit of control over its product in order to make it far more attractive to many more potential buyers. Not only do buyers of a Steam Deck now know that they can get their devices repaired if something goes wrong or if normal wear and tear result in issues, but suddenly there is also a wide open world of potential 3rd party methods for enhancing the product.
Beyond repairability, access to CAD files has inspired fan-made solutions to accessories Valve has yet to make itself. A trip through Thingiverse will reveal all kinds of stands, docks, and battery holders designed by gamers with an eye for engineering and access to a 3D printer.
It’s hard to see how any of this does anything beyond making the Steam Deck either a more valuable purchase for the end customer, or at least a safer one. Either way, that should result in only a greater willingness to throw money in Valve’s direction for the handheld. All because Valve decided to give up a bit of control. Funny how that works.
Filed Under: right to repair, steam deck
Companies: valve
Comments on “Valve Gets ‘Right To Repair/Mod’ Right With The Steam Deck”
You’re usually good at this, but personally speaking, you’re projecting. Nintendo was far from the first name that entered my mind. It’s their software over which they’re heirs of Draco. Nintendo is much more lenient on hardware, especially considering that the Chiptune scene wherein I partake would not exist if Nintendo had the same stance towards Hardware that they did over software. Now you may say it’s only because we modify obsolete hardware, but consider this:
Dylan Cuthbert, when he was a pimply-faced 18-year-old British teenager, hacked the game boy and made it play a 3D Demo. Nintendo, rather than utilizing the Crown or her court system against him, brought him to Japan to find out how he did so and from that knowledge, made Star Fox.
So, Nintendo may be like Disney on Software, but on Hardware, they’re more like Sega.
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I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to get at there. I don’t know how Disney is with regards to software, but Sega’s historically been against the public on hardware.
Re: Re: failed analogy
What you did was catch me failing to come up with an analogy on how Nintendo is with Hardware, and I admit that I have nothing.
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Not defending SEGA here but that case did lead to the precedent that reverse-engineering proprietary software/hardware for commercial expansion without the consent of the original developer was legal assuming no copyrighted content by them ended-up in the final product. That is, until DMCA clowns tried to axe-murder that precedent.
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Nintendo has had a conflicting stance about community projects over the years, from harassing the developers of UltraHLE (early N64 emulator from late 90s with legal threats that never went anywhere) to largely leaving the GameCube/Wii homebrew scene alone, to hiring private investigators to find the real-life identities of public 3DS homebrew developers… while hiring other homebrew developers to do ‘security consulting’ for Nintendo and to allow them to publicly discuss some of their work after a time-limited NDA. It is a little ‘column A’ ‘column B’ sort of thing.
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Fair enough. But it supports my point that Nintendo’s stance on hardware is more lenient than their stance on software.
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> But it supports my point that Nintendo’s stance on hardware is more lenient than their stance on software.
About that*…
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/10/22927827/gary-bowser-sentenced-nintendo-switch-hacks-team-xecuter
Jail over mod-chips which simply bypass the signature-checks of the ROM-bootloader?
* I believe he was in cahoots contributing to projects that sold pirated ROM images and profiting from that at same time. Kind of similar to the trope of a firearms dealer marketing their products as effective for committing crimes and thus losing immunity from liability protections.
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Well, to be fair, that was a black-and-white case. It wasn’t to make and play homebrew games, it was to play pirated games. So there’s little justification there.
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Cool. Do you have any examples from the last 30 years?
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First of all. Read the second anonymous coward for examples.
Second of all, what’s the point of you bringing up the age of my example? It’s not like Nintendo wasn’t draconian then (see how they treated Tengen). The only reason to bring up the age of Nintendo treating unlicensed uses of their hardware is if it’s before they got into the video game business, and my example certainly doesn’t qualify.
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I block posts by anons and my life is happier for it.
You first. What’s the point of you bringing up a thirty-year-old example?
Ah yes, that famous example of Nintendo not punishing people for unauthorized use of its hardware, *checks notes* that time it sued Atari for unauthorized use of its hardware.
What on Earth are you talking about?
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Your response:
Ah yes, that famous example of Nintendo not punishing people for unauthorized use of its hardware, *checks notes that time it sued Atari for unauthorized use of its hardware.*
Original statement:
It’s not like Nintendo wasn’t draconian then (see how they treated Tengen).
Please take another vote for “troll”.
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Nice one! Take your vote for “troll”.
It all so makes the cost of ownership cheaper , if it breaks down it, ll be cheaper to buy parts from many sources and there, ll be docks and other accessorys made. This makes it more attractive to gamers , this is maybe the future trend for other devices and consoles in the future.
Give them more credit than that. Valve’s given up a lot of control over its product. It’s not just repairs; the device is an open platform that allows you to install third-party software or even an OS of your choosing.
That is, assuming we take the position that those are a company’s things to “give up” or “allow” in the first place. A more accurate, owner-centered way of putting it would be that Valve doesn’t put up the barriers to customers using their property in whatever way they choose that other companies do.
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I’ve been using Netgear routers for many, many years because they allow and even encourage DD-WRT and various other router operating systems installed on their hardware.
Would be interesting to find out how many purchasers of their routers purchased them specifically for that reason, and how many purchasers stay with their products.
This definitely padded their bottom line, and by Valve doing this they fired a shot across the bow of other console makers.