Yup. Bought one of the first Steam Decks. Been having a great time with it so far, but I already had to repair it once (SSD overheated - thankfully a part that's not proprietary). It will not last forever and the battery is likely going to be the next part that breaks. I am not looking forward to playing battery lottery on Aliexpress.

What do we learn from this? Valve isn't our friend either. I never thought they were, I'm simply already caught in their ecosystem and bought the best PC handheld there was when it came out (and it still is, in my opinion, even though there are faster alternatives), but the company does enjoy a lot of leeway to the point of worship by some due to other firms in the gaming space being considerably worse.

It might very well be that the reasons for this are out of their hands, similar to the AI-bubble-fueled price hikes for RAM, but especially since they so gleefully advertised the repairiability of this device when it came out, silently ending the supply of spare parts is most certainly not a good look. It would have certainly softened the blow had they announced it and provided a reasonable explanation - and it would also cast a much smaller, if still considerable, shadow on the already troubled Steam Machine.

It's quite a baffling mistake, to be honest, for two reasons:

First of all, did they not take into account that people would notice, which immediately turns it into a much bigger story due to the attempted secrecy? You get ahead of bad news as a company, always, instead of letting it happen. Secondly, the LCD Deck was sold worldwide until at least the end of the year and is still available from Steam in some regions. Did they seriously not stock enough parts, did they plan so poorly, were their contracts so terribly drafted that the supply of spares has already stopped? I get that they are a tiny player in the hardware space, which means they do not have the negotiating power of someone like Sony, but still, this is not a good look.