Steam, the popular digital distribution platform owned by Valve, faced a significant outage affecting users’ access to the game store and online gaming on December 24, 2023. Starting around 1 PM ET, players experienced difficulties accessing various services, including the Steam Store and community features.
Though Valve did not publicly acknowledge the issue, information from SteamDB’s unofficial status page indicated that multiple Steam services, including the Steam Store, Steam Community, and Steam Web APIs, were offline. The outage drew attention on DownDetector, which reported over 6,000 outage reports around 1:15 PM ET, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
Users were unable to access Valve’s mobile applications, further compounding the issues. The outage significantly impacted several popular online games, including Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2, which rely on the Steam platform for connectivity. As the hours progressed, the situation began to improve; by approximately 4 PM ET, Steam started to recover its functionality.
Recovery and Ongoing Issues
By 6 PM ET, Steam had largely returned to normal operations, with the primary PC, mobile, and Mac clients functioning effectively. However, some users still reported occasional errors and sluggish service. According to SteamDB, various online games from Valve remained either down or only partially operational.
This incident marks the latest in a series of outages for Steam. The platform’s previous major disruption occurred in October when both the store and online services were unavailable for an hour. Additionally, in September, the launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong overwhelmed Steam, causing temporary outages due to an influx of users attempting to download the game simultaneously.
As of the latest update on December 24 at 6 PM ET, users can access many of Valve’s offerings, although some parts of the service are still experiencing issues. The ongoing challenges with connectivity highlight the complexities of managing large-scale digital platforms, especially during peak usage periods.
