HANDHELD NEWS – Imagine having to wait an hour and a half before playing your Steam Deck because the device plays the entire Shrek movie every time you turn it on. That actually happened, and Valve eventually had to fix it.
The Steam Deck pioneered the now-crowded market of PCs shaped like portable consoles back in 2022, much like the Nintendo Switch. At the time, the first enthusiasts who got their hands on the device immediately began tinkering with it, which was hardly surprising, since one of the machine’s biggest selling points was precisely that sense of freedom. Many users looked for new ways to import games from other stores, add extra features, or simply make the device behave more like their own personal machine. One of those fans found the Steam Deck startup video, which plays by default every time the device is turned on, and for some reason had the brilliant idea of replacing that sequence with the entire 2001 film Shrek.
This was not a short clip, but the whole movie. Shrek lasts around an hour and a half, and while the idea of watching DreamWorks’ classic every single time you boot up your Steam Deck is funny at first, after the first few minutes of laughter, you may actually want to play something. Back then, however, there was a catch: the intro sequence could not be skipped. That made sense when the original video lasted only a few seconds, but with a full animated feature in its place, the situation quickly became absurd.
The fan in question uses the Reddit name thstephens8789, and his description of the problem, including a video, has since become the most upvoted post in the history of r/steamdeck. The situation spread so widely that even the community moderators joined in, strictly to laugh at the whole thing, which is fairly understandable in a case like this. The user quickly became the group’s punchline, because it is rare to see such a perfect example of customization freedom turning into a one-and-a-half-hour punishment.
The Problem That Caused The Patch
Believe it or not, Valve employees have a certain fondness for Reddit memes, and they have occasionally been known to take part in community-driven nonsense anonymously, simply for the sake of a good laugh. With that in mind, it is easy to imagine that the Shrek-based Steam Deck story made its way to the company, because shortly afterward, the device received a related fix. Among other changes, the patch notes for that update stated: “the ability to skip the opening cinematic by pressing B has been added.”
That is a perfectly useful feature for everyone, but it may also have been introduced to help the poor soul who replaced a few-second startup animation with the entire Shrek movie. At least that is what many people on r/steamdeck believe, and the story is better for it. The lesson is simple: the freedom of the Steam Deck is a great thing, but if someone replaces the boot animation with a feature-length animated film, it is useful when Valve provides an escape button.
Source: 3DJuegos
