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.
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Me, as one who only read the first line before scrolling to the comments, good thing that others pointed out about the topic itself
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.
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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.
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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.
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By definition, no, but most people probably assume negativity when they hear the word rant.
When Gaben dies there will be fucking riots.
I really hope he’s cultivating at least one successor within the company to carry on his vision.
Valve is possibly the closest thing to a non-evil company in the world today.
This is why Gabe is my billionaire of choice in the forthcoming billionaire mercenary wars.
When the corporation wars start over the remaining arable land and drinkable water, I’ll be joining the Steam Corps
Maybe this is going to be the real Half Life 3. You thought it was scary in VR? Get ready for IRL.
I had to stop playing Half Life Alyx when it got to the dark flashlight bit with zombies jumping out at you. Nearly gave me a heart attack. Definitely couldn’t handle it IRL. edit: autocorrect
Yeah I definitely took breaks and actually just never went back after a certain point. Not because it was too intense directly, but one of my breaks, I just never went back.
Same. I was planning to but never did and that was years ago. Hoping to set up the old vive again soon.
One of the benefits of not going public, I guess
But it only works as long as the replacement for Gabe Newell has the exact same ethos about the business. Changing hands always risks changing how things function at a company. Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years, it’s very likely that a replacement will want to “shake things up.”
When Newell retires/passes, things will change. Time will tell if it will be for the better or the worse.
Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years
Supposedly he’s doing this with his son. Only time will tell though.
Great, the Kendall Roy of Valve
Not exactly. Of course Gabe could be replaced by some idiot who fucks everything up, but if Valve doesn’t become publicly traded it will continue to be in the best interest of whoever ends up owning it to continue doing things this way. Gabe doesn’t do good things just because. He does it because happy customers means more money in the long run.
Publicly traded companies on the other hand need to extract as much money as quickly as possible and have no regards to what will happen to it a few months later. So even if Gabe dies, all Valve needs is a leader interested in what’s best for itself.
How much time do we have?
Well he’s 61, and the average life expectancy for males in the US is 73ish. He is well-to-do, so he likely has better access to healthcare than most, meaning he will be one of those who lives past 73. I’d suspect we have twenty years at best, but more likely about 10 years if he retires at a “reasonable” age.
Unfortunately gabe is also overweight and hence has the health risks associated with being overweight. So him only living till the average age has a higher possibility.
Private companies owned by institutional investors are no better.
The real difference is the the founder still own the company.
When GabeN dies, shit gonna hit the fan.
It’s my understanding that Gabe’s son is being prepped to take over when the time comes. Hopefully he shares his father’s values.
Dear God. Because Nepotism has worked out so well so many times in the past. /s
Just shut down the company now, Gabe.
From an interview with his son:
“If it’s one thing I’d like to see Valve do, it’s push it with more their ideas,” he said. "The people there are the smartest I’ve ever met, the hardest working, the most inspiring. The culture at Valve is a very good one but they’ve kind of found this point where they’re a working machine. And that’s good, but I think they should reach out and do something scary. Do something that they don’t know what the outcome is going to be.
“They make incredibly smart decisions, but sometimes you have to do something stupid. Sometimes you have to have a stupid crazy idea and say ‘fuck it’, go with it. Valve has a mindbogglingly enormous amount of resources at their back, and I hope they find the courage to throw it at something new. I want to see them push the envelope again.”
Yeah this chucklefuck is going to break shit day one, guaranteed.
Eh, it sounds more like he wants then to go back to the roots and developer a groundbreaking game, like Portal, or HL2, again. Which doesn’t sound like a bad thing. To do something groundbreaking it probably helps if you dare to do something that is scary.
They literally already did that with the SteamDeck, it’s absolutely groundbreaking. They created a whole new product category, but it took years of planning and patience and watching the market. It happened with prototypes like the Steam Controller, the Steam Link, and the original vision for Steam Boxes, as well as the nearly decade of work they’ve done on Proton to get Windows games to run well in Linux. It didn’t happen with a “stupid crazy idea” that they said “fuck it, go with it.” It started with a smart idea, well executed, over a long period of time, with many bumps in the road on the way to success.
Steam Boxes were originally announced in 2012, this is the result of a full decade of work.
Yeah, you are correct, and that’s why I think he was talking about games specifically. That’s a grade A assumption from me though (and a bit of hopium?)
People here are so scared of bad things happening that they can’t even imagine that something good might happen.
And one hell of a lot of work, too! Reimplementing the Windows APIs that Wine didn’t already have, and then optimizing those implementations enough to be not only sufficient for some of the most performance-sensitive software under the sun but *faster than actual Windows*, is no small feat.
I wonder how much of Newell’s past at Microsoft helped with that? He helped produce the first three versions of Windows.
While Windows works wildly differently these days and the last one he worked on was Windows 3.0 (maybe 3.1?) and a massive amount of stuff has changed in how Operating Systems work since then.
However, I do wonder if his familiarity with the old systems helped at all.
Unrelated: do you know a hot saucerman or are there 4 fans of this random show-cast?
Everyone loves Scotty Auks, doncha know?
So SteamDeck, Valve Index and pushing back against the short-term money maker that was NFTs until half a year or so, among other things, aren’t scary enough projects when you’re “just” a game developer and distributor?
Hope is the word that scares me here
I love their approach to Hardware and Linux but have we collectively forgotten that Valve had a huge part in pushing loot boxes and underage gambling? Far from being the least evil company, but still a net win for consumers and I appreciate that they exist.
And you wanna know why? :)
divulgâche
It’s because they’re not public. So investors can’t ruin everything like they always do.
More specifically “private equity” investors who are gradually looting the US economy.
Yeh, you say that. But you know they finished Half Life 4 about 2 years ago and are holding it back on purpose
Mostly because they have to wait for Half-Life 3 in order not to confuse the customers.
That’s been in the warehouse for 10 years.
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!
Yeah what Valve is doing is great. Hopefully they will become more mainstream in the future and become more known with the super casual crowd. Nintendo definitely needs more proper competition in the handheld market.
Also FYI it’s Phillips with double L, Philips with one L is the Dutch electronics company.
I actually thought they invented those screws, thus linking them to their company. Glad to be enlightened
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I can’t imagine what gives you that idea about the Steam Deck. I’ve had mine for a year and it’s a great little device.
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Lol whoops, did not see the OP next to your name. My bad.
I mean… Phillips heads are hood for what they’re actually designed for, which is, uh, to strip really easily so they don’t get over-tightened. Which is irrelevant if your manufacturing is precise enough.
I think they meant Philips and Phillips
Screw head not device.
Norelco ain’t bad tho
If they do become more mainstream, there is more opportunities for enshitification.
Nah not as long as they don’t go public and Gaben runs the company
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 think it’s the battery cover that usually just pops off like on the indestructible Nokia phones of decades past.
“Battery cover”, or… “kinetic energy redirector” 😉
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!
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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
I just don’t use my impact drill on them and I’ve never had an issue.
The fact that it’s usually fine is probably why they didn’t feel like they had to do this to start.
The failure rate probably isn’t that high, but it’s extra wear over time that can be prevented.
But how do you know if the screws are tight when you’re not counting ugga duggas?
You’re clearly doing it wrong then. You need to torque those screws more than you do your lugnuts
I just sonic welded my steam deck, with extra rivets through the screen and fan to be sure.
I think Valve in on very early steps of enshittification. Maybe not everyone, but most companies started like that. I mean being nice to users. Counterargument to my claim is that they are already millionaires, which is true, but humans’ greed may be limitless.
I think a reason that Valve has been able to be consumer friendly for so long is that they aren’t public and not beholden to shareholders.
To be clear, that gives them the opportunity to avoid enshittification. There’s plenty of private companies that are dogshit. Valve happens to be one of them that took the opportunity and ran with it.
When Gaben retires or dies, things could very easily change. But I don’t think it’ll happen before then.
This is the correct answer.
When a company only has to please customers they are allowed to bend and in extreme cases break their own rules for a customer to be satisfied.
When you have to please share holders and customers. You as a laborer must decide to please the customer or the share holders. Sadly the longer you work somewhere the more like you are to please a customer if you work with them directly. The further you are from the customer the more likely you are to disagree with choosing customer satisfaction over shareholder satisfaction. Begin enshitirication.
That’s interesting. Are there other large non public gaming companies? I actually want to ask this outside of gaming, but don’t want to stray outside the community.
Epic Games*, Mihoyo**, IO Interactive, Bethesda/ZeniMax***, Deep Silver.
* Epic games is 40% owned by a publicly-traded company, Tencent.
** Mihoyo filed for an IPO in 2017, but withdrew its application for unknown reasons.
*** ZeniMax Media was recently acquired by Microsoft, and is now a Microsoft subsidiary. I’m not sure if this makes it count as a ‘non-public gaming company’ by your definition.
Valve being a private company is probably the thing that allows them to focus on putting out good products w/o dealing with shareholders demanding more.
And they make a ton of money doing right by their core consumer base, I would be very surprised if we see any of that change.
If Valve were any other company they would have laid off half their staff and coasted on that 30% from Steam. They’re not perfect, but maybe the only company I feel good about giving money to, consistently.
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Gabe himself is worth over 4 billion.
Okay, I may have misplaced few zeros here ant there, my apologies.
Always be on guard and claim no allegiance to any huge company.
Also, Valve have been pretty consumer friendly for 20 years.
I fear when lord gaben dies volvo will go public and enshittification will begin
Fortunately Gaben has only a minor interest in Volvo 😉.
But actually his son is involved in the games industry, and there’s plenty of other like-minded people at Valve. Hopefully the (far) future of Valve is as bright as its present.
Looks at copier sheet that’s not a Vol-vo.
If valve were public, and required to make a lot more money than the previous quarter, they would absolutely need (want?) to get the maximum amount of money from wherever they could. It’s what I think it’s happening with netflix & others. It doesn’t matter that (hypotetically) they make a billion dolars of revenue. They need to make more next quarter. So they need to raise prices, forbid account sharing, reduce content quarity, anything to earn as much money as possible for next quarter.
Volvo could earn a billion dollars, and if they don’t want to earn more, they could happily stay the same. They might even want to make moves thinking on the long term, such as keep customers happy and excited, or invest in new technologies like proton. Compared to netflix execs, who don’t care about the long term, they care about next quarter.
I don’t know a lot about the stock market, but it looks stupid to me to bet on infinite growth. If the company earns money, and I own shares, shouldn’t I earn money via dividends? It looks to me like the only way to make money is to buy low and sell high? Or is that just greed?
If the company earns money, and I own shares, shouldn’t I earn money via dividends?
You do. Companies give dividends all the time (well, every x months, usually at least yearly).
It looks to me like the only way to make money is to buy low and sell high? Or is that just greed?
Just greed… mostly. A lot of people want to “get rich quick”, and a bunch of already rich people like to gamble to get even richer, so a lot of market volatility comes from greed… but a share price with good growth expectations can make it attractive enough that the company may decide to give lower dividends (no need to attract people), so if you can “buy low, sell high”, you may still want to do it regardless.
You can still ride the market mostly on dividends by diversifying and investing into multiple companies whose share prices will average out in the long run (picking the right diversified portfolio, is an art on itself).
need to make more next quarter
That’s mostly an effect of tying C-suite compensations too closely to share prices, with no further checks in place. When the main driving force behind the decision makers is increasing share prices, they’ll happily burn down the whole company, cash out, and jump ship.
Sometimes it’s done on purpose, when some long-time investors grow tired and decide to cash out, maybe because they expect a change in the market and the company becoming less competitive or even obsolete. If the expected changes are big enough, it’s easier to start a new company from scratch, than to restructure an old behemoth with thousands of people used to doing things “like they’ve always been done”.
The fact that you said Volvo on accident brings me back to the old ThioJoe troll days
I don’t think it will happen. Enshittification has a predictable life cycle. Valve has had years of opportunity to sell out, but haven’t.
Made by hardware hackers for hardware hackers.
