Troubling behavior, please help— 2017 MacBook Pro suddenly unresponsive

[Fzarpo]

Hello all,

This is about my 2017 MacBook Pro without Touch Bar (ModelA1708 EMC3164, running Mojave 10.14.4). The screen remains black no matter what and the device won't respond.
I was gone for maybe 8 minutes. Pretty sure only a single Safari window was open. Don't even think I closed the lid. There was no spillage or shock or any kind of physical trauma. I have no pets. When I returned the screen was off and the situation was as it is now.

I thought it was a display issue at first, then made sure the battery hadn't run out, and finally looked up solutions for booting problems, but to no avail. I have already tried resetting the SMC and NVRAM.

I did notice some things that I think are significant.

1. There's no tone/beep when connecting the USB-C charging cable.
   
   
2. I plugged in a multiport USB-C adapter (which has an indicator light). The thing lights up for something like 11 seconds, then goes dark for around 6 seconds. Then turns on again for another 11 seconds and the cycle goes on ad infinitum.
   
   
3. The Trackpad presents an exact analog: I am able to click it (ie. physically depress it) for those same 11 seconds, then nothing during the next 6.
   
   
4. This led me to think that maybe it's stuck in a restart loop, but:
   The above two only apply when the charging cable is not connected. If it is connected (or if I insert it during the light show), the 6 second "dead" phase happens once, and then the indicator light/trackpad remain activated (ie. lit/clickable).
   [In fact they stay that way even if I then unplug the charger, and I can confirm this is the case for at least the next 10 minutes.]
   
   
5. Everything stops when I hold the power button for a few seconds, probably as expected. The aforesaid behavior restarts on pressing the power button again or closing and reopening the lid.
   
   
6. I tried to make the bootloader appear (hold ⌥) or boot into recovery (⌘+R) but the screen remains resolutely off.

I am a layman when it comes to these things and have no clue what to make of all this. The machine is 11 months old and I've been very satisfied with it until today. Am I right to think that this is a hardware issue? A serious one?
Is there any kind of homemade solution? If not, please tell me there's a way to salvage my local files.

Thanks.

 

[pshufd]

There is a known problem with the 2016 models and not charging through the USB-C port. One of my coworkers has this problem. He's brought it in twice for the issue. In the first case, it eventually went back to charging. He's using his personal Mac for work right now.