Highlights
- Steam is experiencing issues with its digital storefront, causing problems for users trying to download games and connect to servers.
- Steam has a history of occasional issues, but it is generally a reliable platform used by many gamers worldwide.
- The spike in reported issues with Steam seems to be declining, and the problem appears to primarily affect downloads rather than gameplay.
There appears to be something wrong with Steam today, as indicated by a spike in users who are reporting that they are having problems with the digital storefront. While it is typically a reliable platform that many gamers use exclusively, Steam has had issues in the past. For example, in February 2023 many users were frustrated as the service went down ahead of the then-hotly anticipated Sons of the Forest, the survival horror sequel to 2018's The Forest.
Steam has been around since 2003 and was created by Valve, who also happens to be a well-respected game developer with some memorable and iconic franchises under its belt such as Portal, Half Life, Counter Strike, and Left 4 Dead. Steam was initially a client and storefront exclusively for Valve games, at least until 2005 when other publishers began listing their games on the service. By 2007 Steam attracted big publishers like Eidos Interactive and Capcom, with Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, THQ, and Activision following suit in 2008.
In the past few hours there has been a spike in the number of users reporting issues with Steam. According to Downdetector, users are primarily having trouble downloading games, while others are having issues with server connection and login. Larian Studios PR and communications director Molly Carroll posted a cheeky tweet implying that the company had broken Steam; indeed, Baldur's Gate 3 releases out of early access today, and the issues players are experiencing could be related to excess demand on download servers as players try to download the popular Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG.
The number of reports of Steam issues spiked from a baseline of around 3-4 every hour to just over 300. It appears that the amount of reports is steadily declining, which hopefully means that whatever was causing the issue has been resolved. That said, there has been no word from Steam about any problems, one could say that the amount of people having issues is negligible at this time at this time considering the fact that there are over 30 million Steam users worldwide. Thankfully it appears that the issue is primarily affecting downloads, so those who are enjoying the many popular multiplayer games on Steam should be mostly unaffected.
According to the Downdetector map the Steam outage reports are coming in from all over the continental United States with the highest concentrations being in large cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Hopefully, most of the gamers who are looking to download Baldur's Gate 3 will not be impacted.
Source: Downdetector