Is Steam down? As of 12 noon ET / 9am PT / 5pm BT on Thursday, July 22, Steam is totally down on all fronts.
The web version of the Steam storefront is showing DNS failures and won't even load, and while I was able to pull up my Steam library and download games and updates through the desktop client, all online features are also unavailable there. This includes the store, community pages, your Steam profile, and some online games that run through Steam (though I was still able to load into Destiny 2, for example).
The desktop client currently turns up "Error Code: -105" with this explanation: "Unable to connect to server. Server may be offline or you may not be connected to the internet."
Meanwhile, the DNS failure readout for the web version reads: "The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later."
It's unclear when "later" will come. Ironically, the Steam help desk has also been affected by the outage, so while you can still view the Steam support contact page, you can't access the feature itself.
Ordinarily, Steam outages are resolved relatively quickly – often within an hour or so. With no official word on the reason the Steam servers are down today or the expected outage duration, we have no concrete way of knowing when the Steam network will be back online, but with any luck it won't take too terribly long.
This outage has come at a painful time for UK gamers just getting off work and hoping to hop onto their PC, but at least it's still smack in the middle of the workday for the US – not exactly prime gaming time for most.
The occasional Steam outage will likely sting a little bit more once the newly announced Steam Deck handheld is released. While the machine can be used as a normal PC and play other games, it's primarily powered by your Steam library, so an outage may throw a monkey wrench in some portable PC gaming plans. And by the state of Steam Deck pre-orders, there's going to be a fair few of these things out in the wild come December 2021. Here's hoping future outages are also minor.
