In
this Reddit discussion, the querent took offense at us saying that Equipment can be arbitrarily removed or disabled without a Hero Point, unlike Devices or regular powers, where generally it's considered an imposed Power Loss Complication which nets a Hero Point. And... they might be right. There are two mentions of the GM taking away Equipment, one of which seems to explicitly state that the hero still gets a Hero Point when you tell them that their disarmed knife falls off the side of the roof, or their gun is out of bullets and will need to be reloaded, and one which starts out saying that Equipment has this disadvantage, but then seems to back off on it.
Lots of equipment has a limited lifespan: guns run out of ammo, cars run out of gas, SCUBA tanks run out of oxygen, and batteries run out of juice. However, it can be a hassle to keep track of the lifespan of every piece of equipment the heroes may have (to say nothing of all the villains and supporting characters). So these rules pay fairly little attention to equipment running out or breaking down except when the Gamemaster wants to make things interesting for the heroes with a complication or two. Thus equipment failure—either due to running out of fuel or simple malfunction—is a dramatic issue rather than a matter of cost-accounting and keeping track of things like ammo and how much gas is in the tank of the hero’s super-car.
Equipment is subject to damage, malfunctions, and loss, even more so than devices with the Removable flaw (see the flaw description in Powers). Equipment may be lost or taken away from the character with impunity, and the GM may have equipment fail, run out of ammo or fuel, or otherwise malfunction as a complication.
Before someone complains that this is another 3E oversight, both texts are present in the 2E book as well, almost verbatim. What's kind of weird to me is that the text seems to indicate that complete removal of the equipment is not grounds for a Hero Point, but just having it jam or run out of amnmo is. For as long as I've played Mutants and Masterminds, people have treated Equipment as "you don't get a Hero Point for having your gun jam" but having Devices "run out of orgone energy" is grounds for a Hero Point. I feel like that common idea of how to handle things has to come from somewhere, but I can't seem to find a good citation.