Steam Outage Hits Right Before Christmas
The day before Christmas is usually a perfect time to dive into your Steam backlog, but this year many PC gamers were met with a surprise. Steam suddenly went offline, leaving the store and community features completely unavailable.
Just before 2 pm ET on a Wednesday, users around the world began noticing that Steam was not behaving normally. This was not the usual short maintenance window. Instead, multiple third party services showed that something major was going on with Valve’s platform.
The unofficial Steam Status website started reporting websocket errors and listed the entire Steam store, community, and web API as offline. At the same time, page views on Steam Status spiked, which is a classic sign that many users are scrambling to check if the platform is down.
Another popular tracking service, Downdetector, also showed a surge of problem reports beginning shortly after 1 pm ET. Together these reports confirmed that the issue was widespread and not just a local connectivity glitch.
What Was Actually Affected
While it looked pretty dramatic from the outside, the outage did not completely shut down PC gaming for Steam users. The most important detail for gamers is that installed titles still launched and ran normally in most cases.
The problems were centered around online and community features instead of the core ability to play your games. Here is what was most affected:
- The Steam Store was unavailable so you could not browse or buy new games.
- Community features such as discussions, community groups, Steam charts, and profile related content loaded with errors.
- Links inside Steam to external websites and social media accounts did not work correctly.
- Matchmaking services for Valve games were offline, which affected online play for titles that rely on Valve’s backend.
Despite all this, local game libraries remained accessible. One player reported spending hours happily playing Bloodlines 2, while a friend was running The Last of Us 2 without issues. That lines up with how Steam typically behaves during outages. As long as your game files are downloaded and do not require a constant server check, you can usually keep playing even when the Steam backend is having trouble.
So if you had single player games installed and ready to go, you were mostly safe. The real pain was for anyone trying to jump into online multiplayer that needs matchmaking, or anyone hoping to grab last minute deals or browse user reviews and community guides.
DRM Free Stores Take a Shot And What It Means For PC Gamers
Whenever a major platform like Steam goes down, the rest of the PC gaming ecosystem tends to react. This time, GOG took the opportunity to remind everyone of its DRM free approach.
In a not so subtle social media post, GOG highlighted that its games keep working regardless of the state of its servers. Since GOG titles are generally free of online checks and launch requirements, you can install them and keep them backed up, knowing they will remain playable even if the store or your internet connection disappears for a while.
For PC gamers, this outage is a good reminder of how different platforms handle ownership and access:
- Steam relies on an online backend for store, community, and matchmaking but usually lets you play already installed games even when its services are offline.
- Some always online games or heavy DRM titles might still fail to launch during outages, even on Steam.
- DRM free stores like GOG allow you to keep copies of your games that are not tied to an active login or server.
None of this means you should abandon Steam. It remains the largest PC gaming platform with a massive library, frequent sales, and a powerful set of features for both solo and multiplayer gamers. However, it does underline the value of planning a bit ahead if gaming time is important to you, especially around holidays when server problems can sting more.
A few simple habits can keep you gaming through most outages:
- Pre download the games you seriously plan to play during holidays or busy weekends.
- Launch a newly bought game at least once while things are normal so any first time checks are done.
- Keep a couple of offline friendly single player titles installed for backup.
- Consider having a few DRM free games in your collection from stores like GOG as a true fallback.
At the time of the incident, Valve had not yet given a detailed explanation of what caused the downtime. The team behind the report reached out to Valve and promised updates once the service was restored and more information was available. Outages like this are usually resolved without much long term impact, but they always get the community talking about reliability, ownership, and how dependent modern gaming can be on online services.
In the end, if you were set on online multiplayer or browsing the latest deals, this pre Christmas Steam outage was frustrating. If you had a few single player games queued up and installed, you were probably fine, just a little cut off from the usual social and community features that surround PC gaming on Steam.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/twas-the-day-before-christmas-and-steam-is-down/
