Steam Machine has its own Xbox 360-style red ring of death – here’s what it means
You don't want a red line of death on your Steam Machine
🚨 The Steam Machine has its own Xbox 360-style red ring of death error
😢 Reddit user me_hill encountered a red line error that has bricked his console
😬 Valve’s support page shows the blinking red light on the right side of the light bar denotes a GPU error
👀 The light bar is used to denote various issues, such as with GPU, RAM, and SSDs
The Steam Machine has encountered its first major hardware fault, and it’s already gotten a familiar nickname.
Reddit user me_hill was one of the first to receive their Steam Machine this week, before the console stopped working a few minutes later. They state it died after installing its latest firmware update, displaying a red line on the light bar on the front of the console, which has been given the nickname the “red line of death”.
According to the user, the Steam Machine is no longer usable, and it appears to have occurred after playing five minutes’ worth of No Man’s Sky.
Me_hill’s Reddit post reads: “Got five minutes of No Man’s Sky in, then I installed the update the machine had available and it bricked itself. They continued that “If you’re still in the queue, look on the bright side: they’re presumably going to iron this crap out.”
Valve’s support page for the Steam Machine confirmed that the blinking red light on the right side of the bar signals the system has detected a GPU failure, and that the light bar’s various portions can denote other errors, too.
For instance, a full red bar means the device is overheating, a blinking red bar in the fourth quadrant indicates no RAM is detected, a blinking red bar in the second quadrant notes no SSD is detected and a blinking red bar in the left half indicates memory training has failed.
Members of the Steam Machine subreddit have offered troubleshooting steps, but it seems the best course of action is to contact Valve support to get it replaced under warranty.
This kind of error harks back to the infamous Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death, which is where the nickname for the Steam Machine’s error comes from.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that me_hill has encountered this kind of error, as they were also a victim of the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death once upon a time, according to a supplementary Reddit post.
It’s hard to determine how widespread this GPU error is, as there is usually some proportion of early units that can be faulty with any new piece of kit. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if this is an isolated case, or if we’ve got another red error-based epidemic to come.
Up next: Steam Frame release date looms as new shipments of Valve’s VR headset are spotted
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.