History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Last month, Valve finally began shipping the anticipated Steam Machine, albeit at a much higher price tag. Players were excited to crack into the new PC-console hybrid, though one only got about 20 minutes in before experiencing the “red line of death.”
“The Steam Machine was pretty cool for the 20 minutes that it worked” posted Reddit user me_hill. “Got five minutes of No Man’s Sky in, then I installed the update the machine had available and it bricked itself. If you’re still in the queue, look on the bright side: they’re presumably going to iron this crap out.”
The poster’s Steam Machine had a glowing red line along the bottom right half, where you would ideally see blue. Regrettably, this configuration means the console has suffered a GPU failure according to Steam’s guide for its HAL 9000-style LED displays. At first it appeared to leave the console bricked, though after leaving the system unplugged for a day and some user suggested “BIOS stuff,” the Steam Machine sprang back to life.
It has inevitably flooded back memories of the “red ring of death.” The infamous light pattern the Xbox 360 used to flag down its numerous fatal hardware issues. This often required replacing units and would cost Microsoft over a billion dollars over the 360’s lifetime. This Steam Machine error seems far rarer so far, though it’s funny Valve would even tempt fate by incorporating it.
The response to the Steam Machine is divisive to say the least. Some praise the device for expanding the Steam Deck’s campaign to blend the accessible console and confounding Linux experiences. Others are more mixed, most notably former Sony Interactive president Shuhei Yoshida, who enjoyed the device but found its performance a step back. Nobody’s happy with the price, which Valve had to raise in light of the AI-fueled hardware crunch.
“I was tired and irritable after a long day of work,” posted me_hill, “an ominous GPU error code wasn’t exactly the seamless plug-and-play experience I had hoped for. But I guess if anyone encounters the same error, don’t panic like I did, just let it sit for a few hours and it will somehow sort itself out. Anyway, I’m sorry for the false alarm, thanks to everyone who suggested solutions, and now I’m going to spend this weekend playing Crusader Kings until my eyes hurt.”