I dropped my launch edition steam deck last night on carpet and while all the buttons still worked- something was rattling inside of it. After I opened it up I discovered a missing chunk of plastic from the R2 trigger, that piece presses against another to keep the button from over articulating. I suspect this trigger absorbed most of the impact, there was no other visible damage.
Of course I was upset that I broke it, but so very pleasantly surprised to find ifixit had the trigger in stock and reasonably priced. This availability made me love the deck even more, and really the fact valve made these parts available places the deck above any other competition in my mind.
This machine is built to last, I am so excited to get it fixed and get back to gaming.
Gotta appreciate Valve continuing to be a master class in how a successful company should behave
It should be theoretically in a company's long term financial interest to keep customers at least reasonably happy, but the infinite growth mindset is such a cancer that you can see it tearing apart any number of old established brands these days (cough Boeing, eg).
Looks like GabeN decided that going to sleep each night on piles of billions of dollars was enough and he didn't need to supplement his pillows with the customers' nickels and dimes as well. Feels like that shouldn't be such a strange mindset, but apparently it's rare enough to stand out.
It doesn't even just have to be about money, Valve is one of the only major tech companies I can think of that seems to actually care about customer feedback. They don't acquiesce to every request and complaint, it's unrealistic to expect any company to do that, but just in general, Valve genuinely seems to listen more on the whole.
Too many tech companies have convinced themselves that the silent majority's silence equals approval, and therefore the "vocal minority" of complaints need never be taken seriously. But what they don't appreciate is the most vocal criticisms tend to come from enthusiasts, and when you cater to the average users only, you are slowly making your product less remarkable.
Steamdeck feels like a product made for that "vocal minority". It addresses so many concerns that other tech companies would hand wave away because "most people aren't complaining".
i am convinced the vast majority of decision-makers these days are just actually incompetent:
Large corporations repeatedly amputate themselves to save weight only to go surprised pikachu when that causes them to fall flat on their face, small business owners will vehemently oppose building bike paths outside their stores because that would remove 2 parking spaces (yeah sure dude 2 parking spaces is totally enough to sustain your business, that has no relation to why it's currently careening toward bancrupcy), and governments will unironically use the logic of "well we can't build a bridge here, not enough people are swimming across the river to justify it!".
It's cos they're privately owned and so don't necessarily have to be shit, where publicly owned companies are legally required to maximize profits for shareholders.
Not exactly
Just to add to this, Valve is a company with a very peculiar organization, in which the structure is very horizontal and that does its own thing (the structure is not without problems, but it's still very interesting). They also have a surprisingly little amount of employees for such a company! Numbers vary between 350 and 1000!