One of the many impressive features of Valve’s new Steam Controller is just how straightforward the pad is when it comes to repairability. It’s so easy to open up and get to the insides. That’s great and all, but where are you going to get the necessary parts to make any repairs down the line? Well, Valve has told us that, like with the Steam Deck, it is working with iFixit to make it easy for you to bag replacement Steam Controller parts post-launch.
Jacob and I recently sat down with Valve’s Steve Cardinali and Lawrence Yang to talk about the Steam Controller and, as repairability has been something that has seriously impressed us in our time with the new Valve pad, talk inevitably came around to that. In the process of his Steam Controller review, Jacob took his pad down to its constituent parts many times, revealing just how simple it is to get at every part of the device.
And it still works now.
It’s the sort of thing that feels very Valve, and feels like it’s been tailor-made to ensure that there is a healthy modding community for the controller after launch. If someone wants to start making translucent back covers, I know at least a couple PC Gamer folk who would be first in line.
“We wanted to make sure it was easily accessible for our customers,” Steve Cardinali, an engineer at Valve who worked on the Steam Controller, tells us. “We know our community, right?
“They want to take it open and if they want to swap something out, they can do that. If they want to make their buttons look different, that’s fine with us. So yeah, it’s easy to open. In this case, purposefully, there are no snaps in this. If you notice when you open the seven screws, it just comes right off.”
Of course, it isn’t just about customising your pad, it’s about longevity, and that’s why the battery is so accessible, too. “We don’t anticipate it being a problem for anybody,” says Cardinali, “if they wanted to swap it out for a reason, we intentionally designed it to be easily serviceable. You can just swap it out. You don’t need to unplug a connector or anything. Just put it in.”
Inevitably, though, the question of where a user is going to be able to get spare parts from comes up in our chat. “We will be making replacement parts available through iFixit,” Valve designer Lawrence Yang tells us. “Just like last time.”
Though it’s important to note this partnership is not going to be in play straight away when the pads go on sale in May: “It won’t be at launch,” says Yang, “but after launch they will be made available.”
Which isn’t a great surprise given that the Steam Controller is going into a worldwide release, and no matter how good the supply is, there is a real healthy appetite for the first part of the new Valve hardware triumvirate. I would expect all the parts around right now are needed to build new controller pads rather than build up inventories of replacement components.
