> The problem comes later, when many people casually modify their devices and then expect original customer service to get it back to the original state. So de

> The problem comes later, when many people casually modify their devices and then expect original customer service to get it back to the original state. So design the hardware to make that (i.e. factory reset) easy and have the customer try it before any RMA. > Prusa (IIRC) had an interesting solution where you had to break off a physical piece to void your warranty in order to try different firmware. People were up in arms about it, but I think it was the smartest way to handle this conundrum. Sort of. What the customer is reasonably going to want is to have a separate warranty for the hardware and the software and void the software warranty. If someone replaces their firmware to fix a software bug and then their screen independently develops bad pixels, the customer is rightfully going to be upset that the company is using it as an excuse to deny a warranty replacement of their faulty hardware. This is also how you get customers lying to you about replacing the firmware. If you try to deny unrelated warranty claims over that they feel like they're being ripped off. But if the alternatives are "warranty void if firmware replaced" and "closed firmware" the first one is clearly better.