Steam, the popular online gaming platform, suffered a partial outage on December 24, affecting access to its store and online multiplayer games. The disruption began around 1PM ET and started recovering by late afternoon, though some services remained sluggish. Valve has not publicly acknowledged the issue.
On December 24, Steam experienced an outage starting around 1PM ET, impacting users' ability to access the game store, community features, and play online games. According to SteamDB's status page, the Steam Store, Steam Community, and Steam Web APIs went offline, with over 6,000 outage reports logged on DownDetector by 1:15PM ET. The issue also affected Valve's mobile apps and APIs for multiplayer titles including Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2.
The timing was particularly unfortunate, coinciding with Christmas Eve when many gamers were likely settling in for holiday sessions or redeeming gifts. One Bluesky user lamented, "Steam down, Steam down!!", while another noted the irony: "'You got a gift on Steam!' oh cool 'Steam is down' oh cool."
Recovery began around 4PM ET, with the platform largely functional by 6PM ET across PC, mobile, and Mac clients. However, some parts remained extremely sluggish, and many of Valve's online games were still down or only partially operational as of the latest updates. A Steam representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and the company's official X and Bluesky accounts posted nothing about the outage.
This incident follows previous disruptions, including a major outage in October that lasted an hour and affected the store and online services, as well as a temporary takedown in September during the launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which also impacted the Xbox Store and Nintendo eShop due to high download traffic.
