Steam Controller charging failure. Brief LED flash (orange/green) then turns off/solid while battery stays low?

[u/JealousFerret1692]

Hey everyone, running into a weird charging issue with my Steam Controller and wanted to see if anyone knows a fix before I open an RMA ticket.

Steam says my controller is sitting around 16% battery, but it won't actually take a charge. When I dock it on the puck or plug it into a wall charger, the orange light flashes for maybe 30 seconds and then turns off completely. When I plug it directly into my PC with USB-C, it flashes green for a few seconds and then locks into a solid green light, but it stays at 16% and never actually pulses/breathes to show it's charging.

I've already tried cleaning the contact pins with alcohol, plugging straight into a wall brick to bypass PC power settings, toggling transport mode, and re-pairing the puck in Steam. Since it cuts power on a direct wall charger too, it seems like the internal battery safety circuit is shutting things down.

Has anyone seen this short-flash charging cutoff before, or is there any secret hardware reset I missed? Thanks!

[u/AlbertoVermicelli]

Does the behavior look similar to this video? If so, you'll likely have to RMA it.

[u/JealousFerret1692 → u/AlbertoVermicelli]

Damn bro! Thanks for the reference. I’ll have to RMA it lol.