They are BETA updates, meaning they are not polished, they contain bugs. Stick with stable if you don’t want bugs.
I don’t know when it changed, but somewhere in the last 5-10 years gamers and tech enthusiasts have forgotten what “beta” means.
Used to be that if you installed a Beta OS, like Vista, (I mean Windows Longhorn, anyone?) you would pretty much know that something would go wrong, you could lose all your data, and you may need to reinstall everything, but to please submit a bug report so they can look into it. Vista and 7 was had a few bug reports from me I remember.
Now I see posts and people like this saying “I installed a beta OS and it is buggy! What happened?!?” Or worse “Don’t use this garbage product it’s so buggy.” Like, that’s literally what it is, a buggy, not ready for main stream product. I’d love to use some of the new features from SteamOS 3.5 but I use my deck when traveling, and I don’t have a backup, so I stick with the stable release branch.
Unless you are okay with resetting everything potentially every update and losing data, then you want stable.
(and OP here doesn’t seem to be complaining as much as others I have seen, but I stick with my point. Satisfactory forum users are some of the worst users in my book…)
For fucks sake it bricked the prod update too under the same circumstances , so now what? What is the genius response now? Or does it EXTRA HIGHLIGHT that they aren’t even using the beta environment to sus out bugs correctly, because no way this should’ve gone untested in the lower environments even before this…its happened multiple times now, maybe MAYBE you should include the same circumstances in your pipeline tests but what the fuck would I know?
First off your device is not bricked, just reinstall steam os. Here’s a step by step video on how to do it. https://youtu.be/X1fg9TB_DcU?si=vRAe34l4HT10vHyL
Second off, by opting into a BETA you become a tester for an unstable software. Especially when it’s a beta for an entire operating system.
Third off I would love to see the proof that this is “also happening on prod” because it’s likely not happening on vanilla versions of steam os stable.
All you have to do is switch to the stable update, toggle off wifi, reboot and then reboot again. If they didn’t patch yet then it’ll get stuck in verification regardless of the update channel. Go try it.
Edit: They’ve just released a hotfix. Yes they pushed a prod update that broke decks in certain circumstances, shitty of you to be so skeptical.
Valve is capable of making a fuckin mistake every once in a while, you don’t get bonus steam points for blowing Gabe at every opportunity. Maybe check your assumptions next time.
Clearly not if you are still here complaining. I suggest you follow the video https://youtu.be/X1fg9TB_DcU?si=vRAe34l4HT10vHyL and reinstall via usb with a fresh version of the image.
Here’s where you can get a fresh version of the steam os image. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3
There’s a related bug where the deck is trying to connect to the Internet to verify Steam. A way to fix it is with a directly connected Ethernet adapter (or using your phone as a tethered hot spot)
If that doesn’t work, you can reinstall steamOS without wiping your user data or games.
MVP comment
Just FYI this seems to be occurring with lots of decks after the most recent Beta update…may want to roll stable for a bit or avoid rebooting till a new update is out.
Holoiso works okay if you’re frustrated and don’t mind starting over.
More likely to RMA than go that route. Valve should’ve QA’d their updates so should cost em some money if they’re gonna push untested stuff to prod. If you gotta wipe and start over, best to do it with a fresh deck.
…beta is not prod lol
I did that with the deck I received last October because the battery was broken and wouldn’t perform under load. I’ve always treated my systems mobile and desktop as simple computers I can tinker with so personally I’m not bothered with using a different than stock os.
Yeah I don’t mind tinkering, work in dev so get extra annoyed when things like this happen in production, no way soft bricking should even be in the realm of acceptable possibilities for an update. Shit happens though I guess 🤷
Question for you since you work in dev. How annoyed do you get when users confuse beta with prod?
Do you think a beta update channel for a consumer device should not be treated with the same care as prod, do you think it is in a hardware manufacturer best interest to even allow the possibility of a mass RMA event with an untested update? And seeing as how this ALSO affected the main production release as well, it seems as though yes their SDET practices aren’t the best and probably should be revamped. This also isn’t the first time this has happened.
Beta is not for experimentation for a hardware company and no business is going to pushing a public beta channel with a bricking update on released hardware.
But yeah, talk to me about your opinion of beta and we can see if my entire career’s experience at fortune 100 company in software engineering can be invalidated simply because har har beta doesn’t mean prod trust me bro.
Treated with the same care - yes. Treated with the same expectation - no.
By definition Beta is going to have bugs and given enough time and effort Valve will find it. But you wanted the updates faster and that’s the cross you bear by switching to Beta. What happened to you sucks but if you don’t want to catch bugs then switch to prod / stable channel, simple.
It happened in Prod update channel so not sure why you’re arguing about Beta
