An iFixit staff member told a Steam Deck user that the company has no plans to stock replacement OEM batteries.
In addition to allowing you to play Baldur’s Gate 3 In the bathroom, one of the great advantages of the Steam Deck is its repairability. While the Steam Deck OLED received an excellent 9/10 fixability report from repair specialist iFixit in 2023, the original LCD model’s score of 7/10 was still respectable.
But the latter’s repairability rating could have taken a pretty significant hit, as it looks like Valve might remove some replacement parts. A Reddit post put forward by Video card includes a screenshot of an email response a Steam Deck owner received from an iFixit staff member after asking how to replace a degrading battery.
In it, a customer operations employee said iFixit currently has “no immediate plans” to stock a replacement battery for the LCD Steam Deck, then apologized for the bad news. The new OLED model, which has a larger battery than the LCD Deck 2022, is not mentioned in the answer.
“At this time, it seems less likely that we will continue to receive OEM Steam Deck batteries, and we are actively evaluating aftermarket options,” they wrote. “Unfortunately, we do not have a confirmed timeline for OEM or aftermarket inventory availability.”
In a follow-up post, another Reddit user, who apparently also works for iFixit, clarified that Valve was discontinuing the parts in question, rather than it being a decision by iFixit to no longer stock them. While third-party batteries are widely available from retailers such as Amazon, it’s quite surprising to see Valve seemingly deciding to no longer provide official batteries for a device it launched only four years ago. In 2022, iFixit CEO said The edge that replacing the batteries would be “essential for the Steam Deck to stand the test of time.”
If you’ve been following gaming hardware news over the last year, this news may not come as a complete surprise. Valve completely discontinued the LCD Steam Deck in late 2025, and after a period of out-of-stock prices for the Steam Deck OLED skyrocketed in May, with Valve blaming rising memory and storage costs. The Steam Machine finally arrived the following month, with prices starting at $1,049 for the 512GB variant without a controller.
