Parts of Steam still down on Christmas Day after major outage affects loading games and store

During the holidays, many gamers spend much of their time off from work or school on Steam. Sadly, starting at around 1PM EST/7PM CET on Christmas Eve, most services on Valve’s marketplace went offline. Nearly 24 hours later, Steam games that depend on Valve’s API, like Counter-Strike 2, now boot. The store is also operational, but some users continue to struggle with logins and community features.

Soon after the calamity began on December 24th, Downdetector spiked at 13,850 reports. 12 hours later, the server issues seemed resolved. However, the number of complaints about Steam being down is again rising, with players unable to access gameplay tips on forums. In some cases, players are seeing errors when signing in on mobile devices.

SteamDB provides detailed information about the status of Valve’s services. Currently, the website confirms that most problems are community-related. This blocks gamers from the discussion boards specific to each Steam game. Workshops, which offer popular mods and other downloads, are also closed for Christmas.

Some followers are frustrated that, despite critical parts of Steam being inaccessible, the store is fully operational. That means buyers can purchase Steam games on sale or redeem gift cards. However, the social aspects of the marketplace are a major reason why many users prefer it over the Epic Games Store. One theory is that Valve prioritized preventing any further interruption in sales.

What is causing Steam servers to fail?

Gamers have yet to hear an official explanation for why the site went down at such an inconvenient time. The last memorable outage came during the anticipated release date of Hollow Knight: Silksong. A month later, in October, the fans endured a shorter event.

It’s possible that hackers are at fault, as when the PlayStation Network experienced a 24-day outage in 2011. Still, in this case, it seems more likely that a surge of traffic is to blame. Steam has seen record growth, eclipsing 41 million users in Fall 2025. The Christmas and New Year holiday rush only adds more strain to the servers.