On October 27, Steam fell for no obvious reason, and users began reporting weird pictures when they tried to reinstall the app.
Steam customers began reporting that the service was down, and those weird graphics appeared when the programme started on the evening of October 27. Valve has yet to comment officially on the situation, although it isn’t a problem specific to the platform. Live services and apps fall all the time, but some of the problems surfacing due to this latest Steam outage are rather strange.
Steam fell on many occasions last year, sometimes without warning. With such a large service, there are certain technological challenges, and services like Steam may go down for maintenance at any time, but normally with advance notice. Unhappy gamers take to social media to see if they’re alone in their troubles, which isn’t unique to Steam. Both Xbox and PlayStation fall semi-regularly, resulting in disgruntled players taking to social media to see if they’re alone in their struggles.
Once again, there is no reason for the latest Steam downtime. While some users could play without interruption, others reported that they could not access their friend’s list, the store, or other online features. Megadetta, a Twitter user, also stated that when she restarted the programme, odd visuals appeared. Steam looks to be back online as of this writing. However, Valve has not stated why the service was unavailable for nearly an hour for certain customers.
❌ 19:34 PDT @Steam Store is having issues. https://t.co/m0NlDb8Z4P
— Steam Status (Unofficial) (@SteamStatus) October 28, 2021
Looks like Steam got compromised… again…
Servers are down and every page of the steam update is this picture of an explosion. Interesting. pic.twitter.com/rdobbwZd5B
— 🎃 Mega-ween 🎃 @ Resident Evil 4 BUT VR (@Megadetta) October 28, 2021
It was claimed earlier this year that Xbox Live has more outages than PSN, indicating that gaming services are frequently disrupted. Because of the prominence of these platforms and the amount of money they generate, outages are usually resolved fast. Despite this, most corporations address the issue on their websites or social media platforms. However, Valve has yet to do so. If customers weren’t getting strange graphics on their computer while starting the app, this would be easy to dismiss.
Regardless, it’s an incident that will almost certainly stay a mystery. Steam falls now and again, and given that it’s one of the most popular PC gaming software, it’ll probably continue to do so. With the Steam Deck on the way, it’s unclear whether the hardware would suffer if Steam went down. Valve has acknowledged that it’s essentially a handheld PC that can run other programmes. Thus the app falling might not have a significant influence on the actual hardware.
Sources: Megadatta/Twitter, Steam Status/Twitter
