Steam Deck owner surprised by repair cost after puppy disaster

A Steam Deck owner was left impressed after finding out the cost of repairing his device after his puppy demolished one side of it.

Anyone with a young dog is likely aware of the dangers of having things around that they may be interested in chewing on.

Redditor GegeTheGreat learned this the hard way after their 11-month-old puppy Pebble got ahold of their Steam Deck and chewed up one side of the device.

“Pebble used the charging cable to pull the deck to her, and made a snack of the controller grips. disabling the buttons listed in title (r1, r2, r4, dpad and messed up b button). I have rebound those buttons for certain games, but it’s a bit of a pain, plus the plastic isn’t exactly comfy,” they said in the post.

In the post, OP shared that they had just lost their job and didn’t have money for an expensive repair — only to find out about Valve’s support of Right to Repair and the fact they sell the parts to fix the device yourself.

OP asked, “When going to contact Steam I saw their links to the I fixit stuff, is it as simple as buying these four parts? no way its that easy, right?”

Someone in this Redditor’s position would have to send it back to the manufacturer for a costly repair with most devices or even take the $300+ loss and have to purchase a new device entirely.

Instead, Valve has partnered with iFixit to offer the replacement parts as well as instructions on how to change them out. Through this method, OP will be out just $60 and an hour’s worth of time when they go to fix the chewed-up Steam Deck.

Being able to repair your device is a major selling point of the Steam Deck, and one of the many reason’s why it’s taken off in popularity since launch.