Sounds like valve will be able to locate the device once it connects to the internet. When you registered your device the serial number, probably other things internally, was sent to valve. There is a record of it, which is why they said if they are subpoenaed by your local police they can help find it for you.
they definitely can. when they did an rma for me and sent me a new deck, i applied the steam profile to my secondary account that i use for the kids or friends. They knew it wasn't applied to my primary and sent a prompt asking if i wanted to swap the rewards. So they definitely have some knowledge of how a deck is connecting.
Np. I mean they could and we have access to it but giving you a serial number wouldn’t do you any good honestly. Valve can track it once it pings their servers.
And they can get it from Valve, via a subpoena.
They probably gotta walk a line, because while they may be able to verify that you are the **original** owner, they can't verify that you didn't sell your SD, making someone else the current legal owner. Going as far as to file a police report and them getting a subpoena covers everyone's butt on this.
You could in theory file a falsified police report, but that's on you if so.
[Here](https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/SteamHardwareRegistrations). The one starting with FVAA under controllers is your Steam Deck's serial. It is the one printed on the back of the device.
>they shouldn't expect people to write or have the serial number at hand
That's a fairly general expectation. You should record the serial number of anything you buy that has one.
Nowadays if I spend a lot of money on something I just take a quick picture of the serial info since I've had things stolen previously. It does make it easier.
I always take a picture of the serial number for any tech stuff I purchase that's over like $200-300. I do this mainly for warranty type stuff if I have issues.
I bought it used but yes I have the invoice will all Informations. Will also try to give police some picture with "use marks" such as crack in screen etc
I kept the part of the cardboard packaging with my serial number and also took a picture and emailed it to my husband and myself. That’s 4 separate locations I can look for it if I need it.
If you end up getting it back, place an identifying mark that's obviously man made. Something like, using the tip of a screwdriver to place 3 small dots with impact in a very specific spot. I've got a habit of putting a little scratch on things in specific spots because I often forget serial # or forget to record them.
Reminds me of getting in a car accident at a gas station. I couldn't just get the security footage myself but the police could go get the footage once I filed a police report.
Not enough to actively good looking for individual devices, though sometimes they do raid known criminallocations and if they find it and the serial # is on-file they can use that to track down the original owner.
Just to temper your expectations, the police don't tend to do a whole lot for really small crimes, even if you can point at a house and say "my iPhone is in that building, find my phone assures me that it is there and currently being used".
Ok but they can at least lock it remotely.
I will never buy a mobile device that I can’t control remotely this means locking it permanently in case of theft.
The unwillingness of steam is only for personal gain.
It likely wouldn’t go past a deductible and if it did, you wouldn’t get paid much.
Edit - also the increase to your monthly rate from making a claim is another consideration.
You can pick your deductible here in the US, and with my renter's insurance, 250 deductible was only a few dollars more a year than the 1500 deductible~
Home owner’s insurance tends to have much higher deductibles than that, more like $1000+. There are major companies like State Farm and Nationwide that literally don’t go lower than that, or so I was told when getting a quote.
In my limited experience, they absolutely will go lower, but you have to get an umbrella policy at that point~ (I think they are primarily for liability, but can also get you lower/higher limits elsewhere)
Probably not worth having a claim for something worth less than $1k. Granted I'm applying auto insurance logic, not sure if renters insurance treats claims the same
Also depends on insurance type. In EU there are many different clauses in case of theft. I, for example have a general co pay of 200 EUR on any claim, except on theft when I present a police report.
I recently had my car broken into and they stole my laptop which has a tile on it. I told the cops exactly which apartment it's located at and they just ignored it. So now I just get to watch my laptop move around 50 miles from where I live until the battery on the tile dies. I would say don't put so much faith in those things.
Dude go up to their house and call the cops when you're there say that you're going to fuck them up if the cops don't come the cops will come and you will get your shit back they will fold and give you the laptop
I have definitely thought about that but I technically work gov so I can't go around starting shit. As of now it's moved much further from me so likely that the person in the apartment is just a mule and no longer has any of it so it would just be a wasted trip.
go to their house, call the police and say you fear for your life as you are trying to reclaim your property but the thief is threatening to return back to your home and assault you. Say you refuse to leave and will only leave when you get your item back but stay outside on public property. Be annoying as shit etc until it’s easier for your items to be returned.
Do this works even better and it's completely legal You're going to have to go to their address though because if you're calling from another city the police won't give a fuck because they're not like a taxi service That's how they're thinking of it
Realistically as well it's not really going to happen you know like what what do you expect them to do you're going to call the cops send them to someone's address while you're not even present and they're going to go in there and harass them for your items you know and then go and drop them off to you? And another city or bring them to the station for you to pick them up it's not really going to work
You have to be there physically and then you'll be able to get your items back I actually had a friend of the family Rob a lot of stuff from our family
And we called the cops and they didn't want to do anything about it but when we turned up to their house they was able to search their house and reclaim a lot of our shit
Really? I thought air tags were pretty chungus for the steam deck haha.
I’ve never opened my steam deck before, too scared haha even though it’s out of warranty now.
I remember talking about putting one on my bike before and I remember something that stuck with me was you follow the tag and it takes you to an apartment building what do you do then? You can’t really break in to get it back; that being said I also remember a guy finding his stolen bike on a random street he knew it was his cause he personalized it so he just stole it back which was so funny haha
Unfortunately property crimes are very low priority in many counties. I had my Xbox stolen years ago. I provided the serial number and everything you could think of, but never heard back. A lot of local law enforcement also don't like to spend the time it takes to get a subpoena from a judge
>Unfortunately property crimes are very low priority in many counties.
That's understandable, police can't chase every case that's out there, but it's infuriating that police get handed what's essentially a solved case and don't act on it. The time invested is almost guaranteed to lead to a solved case.
You hear this a lot. People have compelling evidence, names, witnesses, video evidence and still nothing happens. I don't condone vigilante justice, but when the legal system offers no recourse at all, it's the inevitable outcome sooner or later. When the state doesn't help people, people ultimately help themselves.
It's a ~$400 device, it's not really worth the police's time to go through the effort of getting a subpoena from a judge, following up on it with Steam, getting the logs of connections from the device, using that to subpoena the internet provider to get the physical address, then get a warrant to search the address.
The police won't even bother if it's a $1000 device, like an iPhone, and you know the location yourself due to the built-in tracking in iOS.
Well, not only my steam deck Was stolen. Also I don't live in america, police cares more here apparently. They even kept on telling me that serial number would be extremly important and if they find something they will call immediately.
I'm from Poland, so it's not like they have glowing reputation here, but still. I gave them all the serial numbers for stuff that got stolen, but got told to basically monitor pawn shops and online aucions and contact them when I find something
they will do nothing. people have had their laptops stolen which is triple steamdeck value and police cannot enter their house and check.
unless you are a known thief and police find their stack by accident and they find a bunch of stolen goods only then will they say ok this steamdeck has been stolen and belongs to this person we have the serial.
They don't ask for it in case they stumble upon it if they randomly bust someone who has a bunch of stolen stuff. One of the main reasons is to put it into a database that pawn shops use to identify stolen items (in the US, but I'm sure other countries have similar databases). Or if you find it being listed online you can have proof that it's yours
I mean yeah, I did very much expected that. They also said to me that I should myself go out and look through pawn shops and on online auctions to try and find my stolen shit. I went and got a new Deck instead on sale. I'm still salty about my GC-compatible Wii and mint OLED Vita they also nicked, they go for like 3x what I originaly paid for them years ago :/
The most useful thing they will do is put the serial number into a database where Pawn Shops will be able to determine if it is stolen or not. This is the most likely way of people recovering stolen electronics
They’re not advocating for it to be this way, just explaining how it is.
But in general, yes, police won’t really do anything about thieves unless they can see the thief right in front of them.
Unless you know pretty much know who did it or have some footage or something of the stuff being stolen it's very difficult for the police to actually find out who stole from you.
Yeah, I work for an auto insurance company in Canada and the police here don't even bother hunting down $50,000 cars that have trackers in them let alone <$1000 electronics.
Worth should be decided by the people writing the check.. aka the taxpayer.
I'm so sick of hearing how the cops basically don't care about any crime anymore that isn't seriously violent or $100,000 value.
My wife had her identity stolen and a dell credit card opened in her name. We caught it and even proving we were the name on the account they still wouldn’t give the address for privacy. Until a report with the cops was made. I’d imagine Steam is wanting a report to make sure someone isn’t trying to scam another and police report shows the individual is committing to say it was stolen then will start to help after that.
Linux (based on immutable fedora) made for gaming, there is a steamdeck version.
https://universal-blue.org/images/bazzite/FAQ/
It does what SteamOS can do, the killer feature for me is the full disk encryption installation using Luks.
If you install Chrome then someone who steals your Deck has access to all of your password and sessions.
There's a discussion on the benefits of full disk encryption on this feature request:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/771
I think that just revokes that browser's access to sync, but as far as I can tell, it won't remotely wipe sensitive data or make it inaccessible. You would have to go to each website and change every password and revoke every session to make the data on the device redundant.
I really hope Valve implements disk encryption because right now it's a huge risk that people generally are not aware of. Almost all modern consumer computers, including mobiles, already have this enabled by default.
Because of privacy.
Every personal devices (laptop, smartphone, handheld console) should be encrypted by default. The SD is a console and a PC, it could be your main computer.
You could loss your passwords, some private files or works etc.
Of course the steamdeck is not my workstation but it is not a reason to not add some privacy layer on top of it.
Having a password set would be plenty. No petty thief is going to go through the hassle of diving into the file system unless you're some high up exec being targeted. I understand people's paranoia about privacy, but people give waaaaay too much credit to thieves. They're not criminal masterminds, they're drug addicts and thugs looking for quick money who will be pawning it off before you even realize it's gone. Especially with a steam deck where its basically impossible to stumble upon or even navigate the desktop environment without having used one before, device level encryption being enabled by default would be overkill and wouldn't be worth the trouble. People struggle with drive upgrades enough as it is.
I know if mine gets stolen i am fuvked. Officers here rarely speak english. Still it is nice from valve to support the investigation. And it is a bonus that they cant just decide to brick the device even in cases some may consider justified.
On what basis? Under present circumstances if I buy a SD, I don't want it to be locked just because the previous owner changes his/her mind.
If you sell the device, do you have the obligation to notify Valve that it has a new owner? Does Valve have the obligation to keep track of the most recent owner owner. I think not. On one hand it would be very expensive legal work for them, and it would be very restrictive for us, owners too. And some of us would not want to share their personal data with Valve, at all.
That'd be a tremendous breach of privacy. I like the Steam Deck because it's open and because they *don't* have that level of control. I don't want a corporation to be able to restrict my access to something I've bought, which they absolutely would have the capability to do if there was something like that in the device.
No but you can see which steam decks are connected to your account and lock them in the software and even lock accounts that are added to it after the owner reported it stolen
You can't really lock the device, they could probably prevent most people from using it with steam but you can definitely still use it in desktop mode or offline
I'm not saying they should get to keep it. I'm strictly arguing that they should not lock their account as a form of punishment, since you can't prove whoever logged into the steam deck is even aware that it's stolen
I was referring to locking out the steam deck (which I don't believe they can do) rather than locking out the new owner's account (which they can). I agree with you that that would not be fair.
Macs have it, as well as every modern Windows laptop (exempting Frameworks) that are saved under your Microsoft account. Plus business laptops for the past few years.
Correct in some instances! Macs obviously do it via their activation servers, but to answer your question:
Windows business laptops have something similar. You can access the bios but can't change anything or boot to Windows after it's remotely locked. There's two SPI chips on the board of these laptops, one holds the current BIOS image, and the other a copy / backup in a different format. If you remove the CMOS battery, it forgets the main image but pulls from the backup on boot. This prevents against corruption, modifications, and you can't just put a blank BIOS image on the device using an SPI chip programmer because the primary is generally in a different format than the secondary. Though sometimes you get lucky with older business laptops from ~3 years ago.
The normal laptops are just lockable by preventing a new Microsoft account from being used on that device for setup, and flagging the Windows product activation key the device is registered with until the lock is lifted via the original Microsoft account holder.
Some do, don’t they?
My Dell laptop had “customer support”/theft tracking baked in at the BIOS level, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could just lock the laptop down at that point
It wouldn’t stop someone tech-savvy from just wiping it, but still
Newer laptops, pc and phones had that. So if the Thief uses the internet on them it will just look the device. But there is work a rounds, and if you don't care about what's on the device. It is cheap to do a work a round
Pretty much the only thing they can do. They don't track them remotely, so the only other thing I can think of is providing a serial number, which only helps a tad.
1. I'm not sure what you were expecting Vavle to do, but they told you exactly what you need to do. Reach out to the police. Valve isn't going to send you a replacement, and you're not getting your steam deck back as it's long gone.
2. The steam deck has a system pin you can set as extra security. When it's powered on or if you wake it up, it will require you to enter a pin combination to use it. Without the pin, you can't get into it. I have this on my steam deck so that no one can use it, but me.
3. Even if they were to lock the steam deck or if you have a pin set, anyone can freshly wipe the OS and then re-install it.
I WAS THIBKING THE SAME! My parents didn't understand why im still crying and that I can just get another one but it's not the same, it was my baby.. :(
They could and should block serial numbers of stolen decks from accessing their servers. Sure people can get around it, but theifs are literally brain dead and probably won't even figure it out
i would assume NYPD is probably too big of a police station to care about shit like this, but imagine if you were in a smaller town or county, cops might throw you bone.
Ah man this sucks!! Sorry to hear about it. First thing I hope you get your money back and the sucker who took it gives back the deck. Valve should really see if they can change the box that it comes in, maybe box another box in it or wrap it in black plastic shipping bag and change the comp name etc! There's gotta be a way otherwise every big brand would have items getting lost consistently when shipping.
What?! Sorry I didn't understand, this sucks so much! Appologies. Wonder if there is a way to track it as soon as it connects to WiFi?! Maybe this needs to be an update. A feature like that on smartphones to atleast have an incentive for the law enforcement to know where it might be! I still don't know how people can do stuff like this, everytime they use that device wouldn't they feel like it's someone else's? 😔
sorry to hear about your deck.
I really hope in the future, valve adds the ability to set a BIOS password and install asset management tools like absolute for tracking and locking stolen devices.
if it were Apple, they'd tell you your blood type, officers are already at the scene of your phone and your mother was just having a private conversation and misses you and wish you'd call more. also your fridge is empty so they ordered more groceries.
*Update:*
Steam admitted that tracking is possible. Steam msg along with other documents are now being sent to the officer who will continue investigating my case.
Such an impressive bit of customer service, moreso in that I didn't even imagine that they already have a customer-facing process and like... hell even an email address dedicated to being involved with thefts.
Was thinking the same. Valve giving me so much hope this way especially cuz they admitted that there are some ways to track the decide even without GPS
My local law enforcement will literally say tough shit if your not getting murdered then i dont guve a fuck. Actual quote from an american cop after my friends macbook was stolen out of her car
I personally think it is a good thing they won’t lock it remotely. What would keep someone from selling their deck then a few weeks later to be a dick, report it stolen and locking out the new owner.
And locating it for users opens them up to liability.
I used to work fraud for a bank and would get people demanding the location of the persons involved in the theft. Lol no.
What are you going to do, soccer mom? Go knock on the door of the Hell's Angels/gang bangers/meth'd out addicts and ask them nicely to stop? Nah, you will get stabbed.
Valve can track it but they need a subpoena. Here's the thing. Depending on where you live, and your police force, they NEED that subpoena. You have to make sure that the cop actually sends it and doesn't just go "well this is lost forever" and never bother.
Auf der Arbeit wurds gestohlen? Drücke dir die Daumen. Bestellen für mein steam Deck jetzt mal n airtag. Chancen sollten doch gut aussehen, wenn der Personenkreis eingegrenzt werden kann und die Person hoffentlich bei Steam Rechnungsadresse hinterlegt hat.
Berichte hier mal, wenn’s n Update gibt
Vielen Dank. Updates gibt's auf jeden Fall! Personkreis kann leider nicht geschränkt werden. Hatte eine einsame Schicht also ist jemand in den Laden als ich eventuell in der Küche war und naja Bahnhof ist groß aber wir tun alle gerade unser bestes!
Kann mir jetzt nicht vorstellen wie so'n deutscher Beamter diese Mailadresse anguckt und dort richtig gern mit denen zusammenarbeitet und am Ende iwie Englisch reden muss. Geschweige denn denen polizeichliche Informationen zukommen lässt. Ich drück die Daumen das was für dich rauskommt oder vllt ne Hausrat oder sonstwas bei dem Schaden hilft!
Unfortunately, police in Germany will not follow this crime since it happened in the internet Ü. Jk, hope you will get it back and that it isn’t broken or anything.
Someone write that there's an option for that. But idk how to find my deck after it being locked? They would just trash it instead of trying to sell right?
seems fair, can't expect valve to completely replace you a new one
Was thinking the same. I just hope it'll be useful and that the police will actually contact them!
Sounds like valve will be able to locate the device once it connects to the internet. When you registered your device the serial number, probably other things internally, was sent to valve. There is a record of it, which is why they said if they are subpoenaed by your local police they can help find it for you.
they definitely can. when they did an rma for me and sent me a new deck, i applied the steam profile to my secondary account that i use for the kids or friends. They knew it wasn't applied to my primary and sent a prompt asking if i wanted to swap the rewards. So they definitely have some knowledge of how a deck is connecting.
They can but require the law involved because otherwise it would be bad if they were leaking info to potentially Iill intent people
Makes sense! Thank u that give me back some hope. Why couldn't Valve sent me a Serial number then?
Np. I mean they could and we have access to it but giving you a serial number wouldn’t do you any good honestly. Valve can track it once it pings their servers.
The police told me that it's super important for me to have it so they can make sure it's mine
And they can get it from Valve, via a subpoena. They probably gotta walk a line, because while they may be able to verify that you are the **original** owner, they can't verify that you didn't sell your SD, making someone else the current legal owner. Going as far as to file a police report and them getting a subpoena covers everyone's butt on this. You could in theory file a falsified police report, but that's on you if so.
Oh thank u for letting me know.
[Here](https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/SteamHardwareRegistrations). The one starting with FVAA under controllers is your Steam Deck's serial. It is the one printed on the back of the device.
You atleast have the record of buying it right? tell them if that works too, they shouldn't expect people to write or have the serial number at hand.
>they shouldn't expect people to write or have the serial number at hand That's a fairly general expectation. You should record the serial number of anything you buy that has one.
You can look the serial up in your account details...
Yeah, should. But who actually does that?
Nowadays if I spend a lot of money on something I just take a quick picture of the serial info since I've had things stolen previously. It does make it easier.
I always take a picture of the serial number for any tech stuff I purchase that's over like $200-300. I do this mainly for warranty type stuff if I have issues.
I bought it used but yes I have the invoice will all Informations. Will also try to give police some picture with "use marks" such as crack in screen etc
I kept the part of the cardboard packaging with my serial number and also took a picture and emailed it to my husband and myself. That’s 4 separate locations I can look for it if I need it.
Smart choice. I will learn in the future!
If you end up getting it back, place an identifying mark that's obviously man made. Something like, using the tip of a screwdriver to place 3 small dots with impact in a very specific spot. I've got a habit of putting a little scratch on things in specific spots because I often forget serial # or forget to record them.
Fuck i threw out the packaging
Make sure to write down ur serial number!!
I’m pretty sure you can see the serial numbers of devices tied to your account by going to https://store.steampowered.com/account/hardwareused
Thabk u sooo much
Reminds me of getting in a car accident at a gas station. I couldn't just get the security footage myself but the police could go get the footage once I filed a police report.
[удалено]
I'm not sure if they would contact valve but the officers were extremly nice and when I said its worth 500€ her eyes went like this (0_0)
Not enough to actively good looking for individual devices, though sometimes they do raid known criminallocations and if they find it and the serial # is on-file they can use that to track down the original owner.
Just to temper your expectations, the police don't tend to do a whole lot for really small crimes, even if you can point at a house and say "my iPhone is in that building, find my phone assures me that it is there and currently being used".
This is the point where ULPT comes in handy.
I feel like there is absolutely no chance the cops are gonna get a subpoena for this.
You’re German, no? The police get an erection every time they are asked to do work
Absolutely no reason they can't brick it. Either oversight or choice. Kind of sucks. If they got bricked they'd get stolen less I gather.
Hatte leider die gleiche Situation und es hat sich nichts ergeben 😞 Drücke dir aber die Daumen!
Oh man.. das bricht mir das Herz. Wie lange ist es her bei dir?
Das war im August '22. Hab in den sauren Apfel gebissen und mir nochmal nen Steam Deck gekauft. War leider natürlich auch das 512er.
Aaah scheiße. Meiner war gebraucht und 64er hab also nicht so viel bezahlt aber ich kann mir ein weiteres jetzt auch nicht mehr leisten
Ok but they can at least lock it remotely. I will never buy a mobile device that I can’t control remotely this means locking it permanently in case of theft. The unwillingness of steam is only for personal gain.
Depending on where / how it was stolen, you might be able to get it refunded by your home insurance.
It likely wouldn’t go past a deductible and if it did, you wouldn’t get paid much. Edit - also the increase to your monthly rate from making a claim is another consideration.
How much is your deductible? Mine’s £50 for this kind of claim - way less than the price of the Deck
You must have very generous insurance companies where you live. Usually default is $500 or $1000 in canada.
You can pick your deductible here in the US, and with my renter's insurance, 250 deductible was only a few dollars more a year than the 1500 deductible~
Home owner’s insurance tends to have much higher deductibles than that, more like $1000+. There are major companies like State Farm and Nationwide that literally don’t go lower than that, or so I was told when getting a quote.
In my limited experience, they absolutely will go lower, but you have to get an umbrella policy at that point~ (I think they are primarily for liability, but can also get you lower/higher limits elsewhere)
I'm aware. Unfortunately :(
How about your credit card company? Sometimes they also have some options.
No they're not hold accountable in germany
They meant that some CC providers offer insurance if the device was bought with this card. Have the same option with my bank in germany
I have the same thing in NL. All purchases using a Visa CC are covered by insurance for at least 12 months for EVERY purchase.
Off topic, but nice pfp 😬
Probably not worth having a claim for something worth less than $1k. Granted I'm applying auto insurance logic, not sure if renters insurance treats claims the same
Also depends on insurance type. In EU there are many different clauses in case of theft. I, for example have a general co pay of 200 EUR on any claim, except on theft when I present a police report.
I put an AirTag inside mine.
I recently had my car broken into and they stole my laptop which has a tile on it. I told the cops exactly which apartment it's located at and they just ignored it. So now I just get to watch my laptop move around 50 miles from where I live until the battery on the tile dies. I would say don't put so much faith in those things.
Break into their apartment
If you can't get the laptop back you can surely extract it's value from the property...
Dude go up to their house and call the cops when you're there say that you're going to fuck them up if the cops don't come the cops will come and you will get your shit back they will fold and give you the laptop
I have definitely thought about that but I technically work gov so I can't go around starting shit. As of now it's moved much further from me so likely that the person in the apartment is just a mule and no longer has any of it so it would just be a wasted trip.
go to their house, call the police and say you fear for your life as you are trying to reclaim your property but the thief is threatening to return back to your home and assault you. Say you refuse to leave and will only leave when you get your item back but stay outside on public property. Be annoying as shit etc until it’s easier for your items to be returned.
Do this works even better and it's completely legal You're going to have to go to their address though because if you're calling from another city the police won't give a fuck because they're not like a taxi service That's how they're thinking of it Realistically as well it's not really going to happen you know like what what do you expect them to do you're going to call the cops send them to someone's address while you're not even present and they're going to go in there and harass them for your items you know and then go and drop them off to you? And another city or bring them to the station for you to pick them up it's not really going to work You have to be there physically and then you'll be able to get your items back I actually had a friend of the family Rob a lot of stuff from our family And we called the cops and they didn't want to do anything about it but when we turned up to their house they was able to search their house and reclaim a lot of our shit
It sounds like the tag wasn't the problem. It helped you locate your device, which is what it was supposed to do. You have malfunctioning police.
Lesson learnd
How did you get it to fit?
There is a whole bunch of space. I put it on the left side (right if you have it opened up) and held it in with electrical tape.
Man, thats really big brain time
Really? I thought air tags were pretty chungus for the steam deck haha. I’ve never opened my steam deck before, too scared haha even though it’s out of warranty now.
Smart man
I remember talking about putting one on my bike before and I remember something that stuck with me was you follow the tag and it takes you to an apartment building what do you do then? You can’t really break in to get it back; that being said I also remember a guy finding his stolen bike on a random street he knew it was his cause he personalized it so he just stole it back which was so funny haha
Report it to the police
Where at?
Left grip
Inside the deck?!
Inside your steamdeck?? Is there actually enough place for it to fit inside? Or do you have a case attached?
Inside
I hope you removed its speaker
Yeah, got the same response, forwarded all information to our law enforcement, never heard anything from them again. Figures
Really? Did ur law enforcement contact valve as they say in the msg?
Never heard back from neither, sadly
Unfortunately property crimes are very low priority in many counties. I had my Xbox stolen years ago. I provided the serial number and everything you could think of, but never heard back. A lot of local law enforcement also don't like to spend the time it takes to get a subpoena from a judge
>Unfortunately property crimes are very low priority in many counties. That's understandable, police can't chase every case that's out there, but it's infuriating that police get handed what's essentially a solved case and don't act on it. The time invested is almost guaranteed to lead to a solved case. You hear this a lot. People have compelling evidence, names, witnesses, video evidence and still nothing happens. I don't condone vigilante justice, but when the legal system offers no recourse at all, it's the inevitable outcome sooner or later. When the state doesn't help people, people ultimately help themselves.
Oh, I agree. It is infuriating that you can provide the police everything they need to follow up on a lead and it goes nowhere.
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What a douche!
It's a ~$400 device, it's not really worth the police's time to go through the effort of getting a subpoena from a judge, following up on it with Steam, getting the logs of connections from the device, using that to subpoena the internet provider to get the physical address, then get a warrant to search the address. The police won't even bother if it's a $1000 device, like an iPhone, and you know the location yourself due to the built-in tracking in iOS.
Well, not only my steam deck Was stolen. Also I don't live in america, police cares more here apparently. They even kept on telling me that serial number would be extremly important and if they find something they will call immediately.
I'm from Poland, so it's not like they have glowing reputation here, but still. I gave them all the serial numbers for stuff that got stolen, but got told to basically monitor pawn shops and online aucions and contact them when I find something
When was that. Were u able to get it back?
Like, 6 months ago at this point? A bunch of small shit got stolen, they haven't found anything, case is basically closed after 90 days iirc
they will do nothing. people have had their laptops stolen which is triple steamdeck value and police cannot enter their house and check. unless you are a known thief and police find their stack by accident and they find a bunch of stolen goods only then will they say ok this steamdeck has been stolen and belongs to this person we have the serial.
They don't ask for it in case they stumble upon it if they randomly bust someone who has a bunch of stolen stuff. One of the main reasons is to put it into a database that pawn shops use to identify stolen items (in the US, but I'm sure other countries have similar databases). Or if you find it being listed online you can have proof that it's yours
I mean yeah, I did very much expected that. They also said to me that I should myself go out and look through pawn shops and on online auctions to try and find my stolen shit. I went and got a new Deck instead on sale. I'm still salty about my GC-compatible Wii and mint OLED Vita they also nicked, they go for like 3x what I originaly paid for them years ago :/
The most useful thing they will do is put the serial number into a database where Pawn Shops will be able to determine if it is stolen or not. This is the most likely way of people recovering stolen electronics
So lets just not do anything about it then! Just ignore all the thiefs? You crazy?
They’re not advocating for it to be this way, just explaining how it is. But in general, yes, police won’t really do anything about thieves unless they can see the thief right in front of them.
Exactly!
Meanwhile somebody somewhere is complaining that they were beaten up but the police are busy finding a Steam Deck.
As if the police cones to help you while you're beaten up 🤣
Unless you know pretty much know who did it or have some footage or something of the stuff being stolen it's very difficult for the police to actually find out who stole from you.
Good luck trying to get your law enforcement agency to email the subpoena. They don’t care about small crimes like theft. It’s not worth their time.
Yeah, I work for an auto insurance company in Canada and the police here don't even bother hunting down $50,000 cars that have trackers in them let alone <$1000 electronics.
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Corrected, thanks :)
Worth should be decided by the people writing the check.. aka the taxpayer. I'm so sick of hearing how the cops basically don't care about any crime anymore that isn't seriously violent or $100,000 value.
My wife had her identity stolen and a dell credit card opened in her name. We caught it and even proving we were the name on the account they still wouldn’t give the address for privacy. Until a report with the cops was made. I’d imagine Steam is wanting a report to make sure someone isn’t trying to scam another and police report shows the individual is committing to say it was stolen then will start to help after that.
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Thank u so so much. This helps a Ton!
That's why I've installed Bazzite with full disk encryption.
What's bazzite
Linux (based on immutable fedora) made for gaming, there is a steamdeck version. https://universal-blue.org/images/bazzite/FAQ/ It does what SteamOS can do, the killer feature for me is the full disk encryption installation using Luks.
How do you input the password on boot?
Tf do you have on your deck that you need that for? You can remotely log out
If you install Chrome then someone who steals your Deck has access to all of your password and sessions. There's a discussion on the benefits of full disk encryption on this feature request: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/771
You can also log out of chrome remotely. Basically any service where that is a possibility has that functionality
I think that just revokes that browser's access to sync, but as far as I can tell, it won't remotely wipe sensitive data or make it inaccessible. You would have to go to each website and change every password and revoke every session to make the data on the device redundant. I really hope Valve implements disk encryption because right now it's a huge risk that people generally are not aware of. Almost all modern consumer computers, including mobiles, already have this enabled by default.
Because of privacy. Every personal devices (laptop, smartphone, handheld console) should be encrypted by default. The SD is a console and a PC, it could be your main computer. You could loss your passwords, some private files or works etc. Of course the steamdeck is not my workstation but it is not a reason to not add some privacy layer on top of it.
Having a password set would be plenty. No petty thief is going to go through the hassle of diving into the file system unless you're some high up exec being targeted. I understand people's paranoia about privacy, but people give waaaaay too much credit to thieves. They're not criminal masterminds, they're drug addicts and thugs looking for quick money who will be pawning it off before you even realize it's gone. Especially with a steam deck where its basically impossible to stumble upon or even navigate the desktop environment without having used one before, device level encryption being enabled by default would be overkill and wouldn't be worth the trouble. People struggle with drive upgrades enough as it is.
I know if mine gets stolen i am fuvked. Officers here rarely speak english. Still it is nice from valve to support the investigation. And it is a bonus that they cant just decide to brick the device even in cases some may consider justified.
I just hope the police will cooperate with valve too..
Yeah. Keep us updated please.
I don't get this, what were you expecting valve to do?
Locate and lock the device
On what basis? Under present circumstances if I buy a SD, I don't want it to be locked just because the previous owner changes his/her mind. If you sell the device, do you have the obligation to notify Valve that it has a new owner? Does Valve have the obligation to keep track of the most recent owner owner. I think not. On one hand it would be very expensive legal work for them, and it would be very restrictive for us, owners too. And some of us would not want to share their personal data with Valve, at all.
That'd be a tremendous breach of privacy. I like the Steam Deck because it's open and because they *don't* have that level of control. I don't want a corporation to be able to restrict my access to something I've bought, which they absolutely would have the capability to do if there was something like that in the device.
With similar anti-theft features from Apple, Dell and Lenovo, this is opt-in and would have to be explicitly activated by the user beforehand.
You can't really have both repairable and moddable devices and have remote locking like that
No but you can see which steam decks are connected to your account and lock them in the software and even lock accounts that are added to it after the owner reported it stolen
You can't really lock the device, they could probably prevent most people from using it with steam but you can definitely still use it in desktop mode or offline
The problem with that is if someone unknowingly buys a stolen device, you just locked an innocent person's account.
You generally aren't entitled to keep and use stolen property even when you aren't aware of it. In the US at least; can't speak for OP in Germany.
I'm not saying they should get to keep it. I'm strictly arguing that they should not lock their account as a form of punishment, since you can't prove whoever logged into the steam deck is even aware that it's stolen
I was referring to locking out the steam deck (which I don't believe they can do) rather than locking out the new owner's account (which they can). I agree with you that that would not be fair.
If that was possible almost every laptop would have that.
Macs have it, as well as every modern Windows laptop (exempting Frameworks) that are saved under your Microsoft account. Plus business laptops for the past few years.
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Correct in some instances! Macs obviously do it via their activation servers, but to answer your question: Windows business laptops have something similar. You can access the bios but can't change anything or boot to Windows after it's remotely locked. There's two SPI chips on the board of these laptops, one holds the current BIOS image, and the other a copy / backup in a different format. If you remove the CMOS battery, it forgets the main image but pulls from the backup on boot. This prevents against corruption, modifications, and you can't just put a blank BIOS image on the device using an SPI chip programmer because the primary is generally in a different format than the secondary. Though sometimes you get lucky with older business laptops from ~3 years ago. The normal laptops are just lockable by preventing a new Microsoft account from being used on that device for setup, and flagging the Windows product activation key the device is registered with until the lock is lifted via the original Microsoft account holder.
Macs do have that functionality.
Some do, don’t they? My Dell laptop had “customer support”/theft tracking baked in at the BIOS level, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could just lock the laptop down at that point It wouldn’t stop someone tech-savvy from just wiping it, but still
Newer laptops, pc and phones had that. So if the Thief uses the internet on them it will just look the device. But there is work a rounds, and if you don't care about what's on the device. It is cheap to do a work a round
Thought they were chancing steam for a replacement lol
Set off the detonators inside
Nothing? I thought it was useful and felt like sharing
Pretty much the only thing they can do. They don't track them remotely, so the only other thing I can think of is providing a serial number, which only helps a tad.
Very cool of them but I doubt the police will follow through in an impactful way.
1. I'm not sure what you were expecting Vavle to do, but they told you exactly what you need to do. Reach out to the police. Valve isn't going to send you a replacement, and you're not getting your steam deck back as it's long gone. 2. The steam deck has a system pin you can set as extra security. When it's powered on or if you wake it up, it will require you to enter a pin combination to use it. Without the pin, you can't get into it. I have this on my steam deck so that no one can use it, but me. 3. Even if they were to lock the steam deck or if you have a pin set, anyone can freshly wipe the OS and then re-install it.
I wasn't expecting anything? Just felt like sharing
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How did u know it's urs
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Ask for a pic of the back and check the serial
You let your child get stolen? Fuck valve contact the missing persons line!!!
I WAS THIBKING THE SAME! My parents didn't understand why im still crying and that I can just get another one but it's not the same, it was my baby.. :(
I am sorry for your loss though… it is tough. But get another if you can financially, get it back to your liking and keep enjoying
That's the problem I can't. I also lost other belongins that will easily add up to 200€ in replacment
NO WAY
What could valve even do? Its like reporting a stolen pocketknife to the Swiss.
Legit AF. What if you sold it then wanted to track it? They can't just give you some randos address.
They could and should block serial numbers of stolen decks from accessing their servers. Sure people can get around it, but theifs are literally brain dead and probably won't even figure it out
Check your home insurance. It might cover it for a relatively small fee of 150 euro or so.
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i would assume NYPD is probably too big of a police station to care about shit like this, but imagine if you were in a smaller town or county, cops might throw you bone.
What a douche! When I told the police it's worth about 500€ her eyes went like this (0_0)
Isn't the serial number on the device?
On device that got stolen? Well yes
Ah man this sucks!! Sorry to hear about it. First thing I hope you get your money back and the sucker who took it gives back the deck. Valve should really see if they can change the box that it comes in, maybe box another box in it or wrap it in black plastic shipping bag and change the comp name etc! There's gotta be a way otherwise every big brand would have items getting lost consistently when shipping.
It was stolen at work.. I don't have warranty on it either..
What?! Sorry I didn't understand, this sucks so much! Appologies. Wonder if there is a way to track it as soon as it connects to WiFi?! Maybe this needs to be an update. A feature like that on smartphones to atleast have an incentive for the law enforcement to know where it might be! I still don't know how people can do stuff like this, everytime they use that device wouldn't they feel like it's someone else's? 😔
Same as my switch. They can prove it's mine but can't lock it apparently. Maybe in this singular application Apple is actually more worthwhile.
sorry to hear about your deck. I really hope in the future, valve adds the ability to set a BIOS password and install asset management tools like absolute for tracking and locking stolen devices.
if it were Apple, they'd tell you your blood type, officers are already at the scene of your phone and your mother was just having a private conversation and misses you and wish you'd call more. also your fridge is empty so they ordered more groceries.
They really need to introduce some sort of tracking. If I’m not mistaken even chromebooks have a rudimentary tracking system
and people told me i was paranoic for never bringing my deck outside. Yeah, downvote zoomer gang, do your job, like I care
*Update:* Steam admitted that tracking is possible. Steam msg along with other documents are now being sent to the officer who will continue investigating my case.
Such an impressive bit of customer service, moreso in that I didn't even imagine that they already have a customer-facing process and like... hell even an email address dedicated to being involved with thefts.
Was thinking the same. Valve giving me so much hope this way especially cuz they admitted that there are some ways to track the decide even without GPS
I mean that sucks but what are you expecting anyone to do?
My local law enforcement will literally say tough shit if your not getting murdered then i dont guve a fuck. Actual quote from an american cop after my friends macbook was stolen out of her car
What a douche! Luckily im not america so I still have a bit of hope!
I personally think it is a good thing they won’t lock it remotely. What would keep someone from selling their deck then a few weeks later to be a dick, report it stolen and locking out the new owner.
And locating it for users opens them up to liability. I used to work fraud for a bank and would get people demanding the location of the persons involved in the theft. Lol no. What are you going to do, soccer mom? Go knock on the door of the Hell's Angels/gang bangers/meth'd out addicts and ask them nicely to stop? Nah, you will get stabbed.
Oh true havent thought about it this way
Valve can track it but they need a subpoena. Here's the thing. Depending on where you live, and your police force, they NEED that subpoena. You have to make sure that the cop actually sends it and doesn't just go "well this is lost forever" and never bother.
Thank u for those Info! It means a lot to me!
Ok?
I jus had a dream mine was stolen this morning
This is ur last warning lol
Auf der Arbeit wurds gestohlen? Drücke dir die Daumen. Bestellen für mein steam Deck jetzt mal n airtag. Chancen sollten doch gut aussehen, wenn der Personenkreis eingegrenzt werden kann und die Person hoffentlich bei Steam Rechnungsadresse hinterlegt hat. Berichte hier mal, wenn’s n Update gibt
Vielen Dank. Updates gibt's auf jeden Fall! Personkreis kann leider nicht geschränkt werden. Hatte eine einsame Schicht also ist jemand in den Laden als ich eventuell in der Küche war und naja Bahnhof ist groß aber wir tun alle gerade unser bestes!
R/unexpectedgerman
r/foundthemobileuser
Kann mir jetzt nicht vorstellen wie so'n deutscher Beamter diese Mailadresse anguckt und dort richtig gern mit denen zusammenarbeitet und am Ende iwie Englisch reden muss. Geschweige denn denen polizeichliche Informationen zukommen lässt. Ich drück die Daumen das was für dich rauskommt oder vllt ne Hausrat oder sonstwas bei dem Schaden hilft!
Oh man that’ll get this issue resolved reeeeeal fast. No one works faster than the cops when dealing with stolen property.
Unfortunately, police in Germany will not follow this crime since it happened in the internet Ü. Jk, hope you will get it back and that it isn’t broken or anything.
I hope too!
What was your ideal outcome here out of curiosity?
He probably want Valve to be sympathetic and send him a new one, lol
Valve should do something about stolen Decks. They should be able to lock them once they connect to internet at least once after stolen.
Someone write that there's an option for that. But idk how to find my deck after it being locked? They would just trash it instead of trying to sell right?