These Steam Deck custom resin buttons look phenomenal — and they’re for sale

theverge.com:

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Would you spend $40–$60 on artisan buttons for your Steam Deck? What if they were cast by hand from custom resin molds, made by just one guy in the USA?

I imagine it would depend on how they look — but thankfully, they look amazing.

Today, Greg Leddy is following up his TouchProtect touchpad and button skins and custom-painted ColoredControllers with the new DeckButtons.com, a shop where he exclusively sells buttons and D-pads for your Steam Deck. Each one is cast in a custom two-part silicone mold of his own design, itself created from a master button he 3D prints from resin, hand-sands, and finishes to emulate the Steam Deck’s own slightly sandy shell texture.

Leddy sent me two full sets of his buttons, and they look and feel like the real deal. Not that I can light them as elegantly as he does in the photos he provided:

While they come in a variety of simpler colors like neon pink, blue, yellow, purple, and red, as well as glitter-infused purple and black, I just can’t bring myself to spend any of the real estate in this story on anything but the limited-edition holo set.

I particularly like the easter eggs: check out the slice of Portal cake I spotted on the back of my new D-pad:

If you’re interested in these custom buttons, a few things you should know:

First, you should be comfortable digging around in your gadgets! Even just swapping out the D-pad means meant removing 20 screws and three boards and disconnecting five ribbon cables. Thankfully, these ribbons are much more forgiving than the ones in the Nintendo Switch. Here’s the install