While iFixit is an official repair vendor for the handheld, Valve has since confirmed Steam Deck repairs should be left to professionals, or at least tech-savvy folks.

News that Steam Deck repairs should be left to professionals comes from Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais, who said its portable size makes it harder to tinker with or repair.

“At the end of the day, it’s a PC that that you own, and so we were very cognizant of that fact that people wanted to have all the data on what’s in there,” Griffais said to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “But we recommend repairs are left to pros or returned to Valve for anything that goes wrong, if that comes up.”

Griffais noted that the Steam Deck, a small, Linux-based PC brings with it the ironclad notion of it being user-accessible and upgradeable, like any other PC. Users on PC are usually more inclined to upgrade or tinker with their hardware compared to console owners.

Despite this, Griffais reiterated that keeping the Steam Deck small and portable was what took priority, over ease-of-access for tinkering or repairs.

“We recognise that there’s a big desire for people to be able to upgrade their PCs and we looked at it really hard, but at the end of the day, the goal of having the portability and the handheld form factor was pretty at odds with a lot of that,” Griffais said.

He added, “So we got in what we could, and we made it as modular as possible, given the goal of being portable, but it’s definitely a big tradeoff that we had to walk there.”

Valve’s recently launched Steam Deck is now available, and in three flavors: $399 (64GB), $529 (256GB), and $649 (512GB), over on the Steam store.

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