Valve warns against possibly dangerous TikTok craze - don't inhale from your Steam Deck vents

The online world is a colorful place that often descends into stupidity, or beyond, and some of the fads witnessed on TikTok (and elsewhere) demonstrate this - the latest being huffing the fumes from the Steam Deck's cooling vents.

2

Yes, you read that right - the idea is to directly breathe in the exhaust fumes, with one Steam Deck owner messaging Valve to check if it's safe to do so, observing that they "kinda like" doing this.

As you might guess, this is a practice that's probably best avoided on balance.

As detailed on Reddit, Valve replied to the Steam Deck owner to say: "As with all electronics, it is generally not recommended you inhale the exhaust fumes on your device. While there are no safety concerns with general usage, directly inhaling the device's vent fumes should be avoided. We understand that it may be a meme, but please refrain from this behavior for the safety of your health."

Politely put, Valve. Politely put...

On the Reddit thread (spotted by Tom's Hardware) there are further discussions of the difference between the vent smell of the new OLED-toting Steam Deck compared to the old LCD screen.

The OLED model apparently has a "stronger chemical like smell" and caused one Redditor to get a migraine, apparently, which the LCD Steam Deck didn't.

If you're huffing your Steam Deck that much to give you a migraine, that really can't be good news.

In other slightly less ridiculous Steam Deck news recently, we witnessed a seriously cool mod that hooks up a 61TB SSD to the handheld. That should be enough space for anyone's games library, no matter how extensive.