GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Valve has been incredibly friendly to customers who need repairs — which is why it was so surprising to hear that Valve was already discontinuing the battery for the Steam Deck LCD handheld. It would have meant you could no longer just buy a battery from iFixit and install it yourself. Why would Valve stop stocking the most important replacement part just as people are starting to need it?
Here is Valve’s answer to The Verge, as of 5PM ET: “We just confirmed with iFixit that they plan to have batteries back in stock by next week.”
“iFixit will be getting the same OEM parts sourced through Valve’s partners that they always have,” spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle tells me.
The Reddit story wasn’t necessarily false. Earlier today, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens confirmed to The Verge that it had indeed heard that Valve would no longer make replacement batteries or screens for the original Steam Deck LCD.
But by afternoon, Valve and iFixit had already managed to change that. “They have hooked us up with a supplier, we’re working on it,” Wiens now tells me. And if Valve does decide to sunset the part in the future, iFixit says it’ll be ready to take up the torch by using an aftermarket supplier instead. “I want people to know we are going to find a way to get batteries for these things,” says Wiens.
iFixit staffers said the other day that Valve was sunsetting the parts. That’s no longer true of the battery, at least not right now. Image: Reddit
Wiens says Valve has “been a really great partner.” He suspects that Valve and its suppliers simply bet wrong on how many replacement parts they needed to produce.
“If you get the forecast wrong, you run out, or you go wrong in the other direction and spend way too much money on parts sitting around doing nobody any good.”
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