https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-deck/second-hand-market-concerns
The secondary market for the Steam Deck is under the microscope following a nightmare that's left one customer with nowhere to turn.
Not getting OEM repairs on used products period isn't mind blowing, ignoring that it's stolen.
I disagree, used products should get the OEM warranty just the same. The unit is the same age regardless.
Theft is the big issue here. Steam should have the ability to blacklist units just the same as cellphones, but at the same time, buyers need to have the ability to check for theft at the time of purchase via serial number.
Why? But regardless, the product was beyond warranty, and not getting warranty service on a stolen device is normal.
Steam having the ability to blacklist devices massively compromises their value. The completely open nature of the device is a big part of what they advertised and how they sold it.
You poor Americans. Product isn’t even 2 years out of release and you accept that as a decent lifespan for an electronic device like this.
Likewise warranties exist to guarantee the quality of product, there’s no reason the company should be absolved from that simply because the user has changed.
This is idiotic.
The life span of the device is perfectly fine. There is no reason for or benefit to sending the device back to whatever random third party Valve wants to hire for service.
It's fucking stolen. There is no warranty.
Being stolen is a seperate beast.
You said “ But regardless, the product was beyond warranty” it wouldn’t be if you had proper consumer protections.
Our consumer protections are perfectly fine.
The idea that buying a product obligates the company to service it until the end of time is deranged. The life span of any product is heavily dependent on how a user cares for it. Cars with a 5-10 year warranty will easily last 25 years if used reasonably, and easily die in less than their warranty length if you abuse them. If you required a 25 year warranty on cars because that's how long they should last, the only outcome is that people who take care of their cars would have to pay more to subsidize idiots who break them.
Every other product is identical. It's not a coincidence that consumer electronics cost more in every country with "better consumer protection laws", even accounting for your ridiculous tax rates. It's because everyone is forced to pay extra, up front, to offset the costs of the people who aren't willing to take proper care of their devices. That's not better or better "value" to anyone.
It's completely ranged mate and it's how the system operates in Australia. Would not be surprised to hear of similar from the kiwis, cannucks, or euro's.
We require products to meet up with certain expectations, such as lasting a reasonable lifespan. No one in their right mind would buy a laptop or a console if they expected it to stop working after just one year.
And quickly comparing 2 tax calculators, I would be taking home less money in the US after taxes. I'm not sure how accurate the US one is, because their government doesn't offer any such service themselves it seems so I had to trust a 3rd party site but I guess those taxes are going towards good things like the military and not useless things like improving citizens lives so that's a small price to pay.
They're lucky it wasn't just bricked remotely when reported.
It's honestly surprising they don't do that
They could probably blacklist it from getting SteamOS updates through their servers, but actually bricking it would involve taking away from the "it's just a PC" nature of the device.
TIL...
I just assumed laptops would get bricked if reported stolen like a phone or console, but apparently they don't?
This actually makes a Steam Deck a huge target for theft
I don't know about you, but I'm really happy that Valve and PC manufacturers can't just decide to lock me out whenever they want. After I buy it, it's mine, not theirs, and I should be the one to decide whether to install a mechanism to brick it if it gets stolen.
People still steal phones despite knowing that they'll get bricked, they're still worth something for parts.
With android the user can go to their Google account and remotely brick the phone themselves. But it's you, the owner, doing the change, and I agree with it.
On that grounds, Im sure you could write or find a program to give you the ability to remotely brick your steam deck when it next connects to the internet
Exactly. There are plenty of rootkits out there that can destroy the BIOS or something, and writing a way to run that remotely that would be pretty easy (just set up a cron job to check an online service periodically to see if it should brick itself).
However, I'd rather the thieves be able to use something they stole from me instead of just creating more ewaste. So I'm against the idea of remotely bricking things, especially for something like a gaming device where there is no personal information. For something like a phone, I just care that my personal data is safe, so I prefer a remote wipe to a remote brick.
I instead protect my stuff with physical measures instead of technical.
Some corporate computers have a way to do this via the bios but it must be preconfigured and can easily be turned off if it hasn't been.
The onboard storage is a removable NVMe or eMMC memory module, it could be blanked or replaced.
Amazing how quick people have gotten used to not owning their electronics.
It was a stolen unit. As the article says, best course of action is to go back to eBay and report it.
I only wonder if there is something a potential buyer can do beforehand to check if a unit is in good standing with valve.
Would a BIOS password with FDE make a stolen steam deck useless? I haven't gotten my hands on one to test yet.
The BIOS doesn't usually handle encryption, that's usually the bootloader on the drive itself. They could just reformat the drive with the standard Valve image and they're good to go.
It could protect your Steam account though, so if you're worried about them making illegal purchases or something, it can help somewhat. But most thieves aren't that sophisticated, they just want to resell it for quick cash.
In order for the BIOS to work, you'd need to have some kind of cryptographic link with the boot media, something that the standard Valve image wouldn't satisfy. But let's say you do that for your own device, all that does is annoy the thief, it's not going to prevent the thief from stealing your device. Now if every Steam Deck did that by default, maybe thieves would be less interested in stealing it, IDK (probably not, I doubt Steam Decks are popular enough for thieves to now how stealable they are).
I personally don't see the point. Steam Decks typically don't have sensitive, personal data on them that needs to be wiped, so bricking them doesn't benefit the original purchaser being a small amount of "justice" at knowing the thief just stole ewaste. I'd rather a thief resell it and someone get to use it than it just be tossed in the trash.
When you purchase something on the steam store you get an email with the recipe. If your email client is somewhat decent you should be able to find it in a couple of seconds.
A digital receipt is pointless as they can be faked very easily. Each steam deck would need to come with an NFT or something.
You'd just pair it with your Steam account just like you do with phones to your carrier. The transaction in this case would require releasing the Deck from the current owner before buying (which could be verified easily, perhaps with a serial or something).
I guess you could do it with an NFT, but just involving Steam in the transaction (registering a new account) would absolutely work.
That said, I don't want that because that would just turn stolen Decks into ewaste. I'd rather my stuff get used than tossed in a landfill.