What's going on with Steam lately?

DTH1337

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Feb 27, 2012
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Now, I'm not talking about the whole Early Access program flooding the store page on a daily basis or Steam Greenlight controversies, I'm talking about the very random connection issues that Steam has been having lately (for me and several other people) over the past few weeks.

Now I don't know if this is widespread or anything, but over the last few weeks, the Steam client has been acting up a lot. Usually, it seems to not allow access to the store page, community page or your own personal profile (only the library page has no problems), and when it does this, it happens for quite some time and it doesn't seem to be from any kind of maintenance and I know for a fact that it isn't my internet connection.

So, is this happening to you on Steam? If so, what issues are you experiencing and what do you think is causing this?

As usual, comments below, and thanks for reading.
 

Abe Mac

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Aug 11, 2011
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Sounds like steam is downloading stuff in the background and that is slowing down your bandwith. Remember that updates on steam happen automatically, and if you have a large library (like me) then when you first log on to steam you probably have several updates that need to be downloaded. Steam will do this automatically, and this can cause other internet-related activities (like youtube, loading the escapist, or accessing steam's store, community, or profile pages) to slow down considerably. If this is really such a huge problem consider turning off automatic updates or pausing updates until you have free time to download them.

Source: Personal Experience
 

DTH1337

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Feb 27, 2012
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Well I can understand your personal experience, but from what I'm seeing on the client at the moment, there are no updates happening on either the client or any of my games. As well as that, I have a friend who's having the exact same problem, as well as other people on the steam forums who are reporting similar issues.

Also, while I'm not considering this to be related to the problem, but I was playing Payday 2 earlier and for some reason the frame-rate dropped considerably in a short time during a co-op session and then crashed to desktop (first time it's happened with the game). Again, I'm not saying it's related to the issue (most likely was just a problem that can easily be fixed with a patch), but considering what's going on with the client at this time, it's getting me very worried about the service in general.
 

Ubiquitous Duck

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On the point of saying that you are not sure if it is widespread:

I reside in the UK and I log onto Steam every day and have not been having connectivity issues.

I get minor irritants like pages not immediately loading, but a refresh tends to sort this out. So no, I wouldn't say I've been having any abnormal or persistent issues lately.
 

The Forces of Chaos

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Mar 25, 2010
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Same thing has been happing to me recently. In the evening mostly, during some of the Dota 2 tournaments (missed a few matches). I this problems more wide spread or a EU severs thing?
 

Sandernista

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Feb 26, 2009
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Abe Mac said:
Sounds like steam is downloading stuff in the background and that is slowing down your bandwith. Remember that updates on steam happen automatically, and if you have a large library (like me) then when you first log on to steam you probably have several updates that need to be downloaded. Steam will do this automatically, and this can cause other internet-related activities (like youtube, loading the escapist, or accessing steam's store, community, or profile pages) to slow down considerably. If this is really such a huge problem consider turning off automatic updates or pausing updates until you have free time to download them.

Source: Personal Experience
No I don't think so. The same thing has been happening to me, and many of my friends as well. We've all been online, playing a game of EU4 and we have all lost connection to the steam servers at the same time. This has happened multiple times in the last week or so. I only keep 3-4 games installed at a time and have excellent internet, ~50mb/s down and ~10mb/s up.

 

Wackymon

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Jul 22, 2011
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My idea? Obviously Valve is having a AI grow inside the steam servers, who's greenlighting a metric tons of games she enjoys, and finds entertaining. But the issue is that she does not have any judgement, so she's adding a lot of crap.

Then she discovered the internet.

Oh joy.

Now she's surfing The entire internet to keep herself entertained, which expectedly takes up most of valves bandwidth.

Obviously.
 

William Fleming

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Mar 6, 2011
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It's been barely functional for me over since around the time it completely went down for everyone. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, though it is helping me get on with Uni coursework.
 

Radeonx

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Apr 26, 2009
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It's probably just server issues or, like a guy above said, there's a DDoS. It isn't bad enough where steam is completely unusable, but it is still pretty fucking annoying.
 

NLS

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Jan 7, 2010
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I think they're doing some mainteneance and upgrades. Should probably be over soon.
 

The Aimless One

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Aug 22, 2009
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I have no idea what the cause might be....but I've had the same experience.

Over the last few weeks I've been unable to connect to the steam server a couple timas a day...nearly every day...
My internet connection is allways working fine when it happens and I usually check here:
http://www.issteamdown.com/
when it happens, to see if it's just me or if more people are having problems.


Steam's been down a lot lately.
 
Dec 16, 2009
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I have the Steam icon on my task bar, every so open the bugar just wont open.

last few weeks its been happening a lot, I have to right click the icon and select library. very annoying
 

Kathinka

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Jan 17, 2010
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the only logical conclusion is that gabe spilled his tripple sugar orange smoothy over the steam servers again.

and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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wackymon said:
My idea? Obviously Valve is having a AI grow inside the steam servers, who's greenlighting a metric tons of games she enjoys, and finds entertaining. But the issue is that she does not have any judgement, so she's adding a lot of crap.

Then she discovered the internet.

Oh joy.

Now she's surfing The entire internet to keep herself entertained, which expectedly takes up most of valves bandwidth.

Obviously.
You're saying that Valve is now possessed by a version of GLaDoS that had its evil components replaced with ADHD?

This... I can live with this turn of events.
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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Kathinka said:
the only logical conclusion is that gabe spilled his tripple sugar orange smoothy over the steam servers again.

and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
I wish people would stop saying this.

Unless you're logging into a new computer, your credentials are saved onto your computer so you can instantly enter offline mode if things go belly-up on Steam's side. Sure, your multiplayer games are screwed, but piracy won't help that.

So on Steam, you have one extra button press than normal if it all goes wrong.

Pirated stuff, however, often requires re-mounting of the image and a few other things to bypass the DRM if your system freaks out (source: friend), so it's not the wondrous no-effort alternative people like to pretend it is.
 

Eldritch Warlord

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Jun 6, 2008
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Kathinka said:
and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
That's a terrible argument, the Steam library is working just fine according to OP. There's nothing about these issues which prevent anyone from playing their Steam games, just buying new ones.
 

The White Hunter

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Oct 19, 2011
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lacktheknack said:
Kathinka said:
the only logical conclusion is that gabe spilled his tripple sugar orange smoothy over the steam servers again.

and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
I wish people would stop saying this.

Unless you're logging into a new computer, your credentials are saved onto your computer so you can instantly enter offline mode if things go belly-up on Steam's side. Sure, your multiplayer games are screwed, but piracy won't help that.

So on Steam, you have one extra button press than normal if it all goes wrong.

Pirated stuff, however, often requires re-mounting of the image and a few other things to bypass the DRM if your system freaks out (source: friend), so it's not the wondrous no-effort alternative people like to pretend it is.
Hmm yes mostly that's true, except yesterday staika and I encountered a fun little bug where running his net through his modem rather than the router (cutting out a middle man) essentially made steam unable to connect, and it even refused to connect in offline mode.

>>>Edit: No seriously it took like an hour of trying every trick in the book and then it's something utterly ridiculous.

Steam is very far from perfect, and whilst I've mostly been able to play games whilst it's been offon/off/on/off/on the last 4 or 5 weeks it really is starting to grate when I'm after some multiplayer or when I want to check the store or finally get round to flogging those damned trading cards/
 

lacktheknack

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Jan 19, 2009
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The White Hunter said:
lacktheknack said:
Kathinka said:
the only logical conclusion is that gabe spilled his tripple sugar orange smoothy over the steam servers again.

and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
I wish people would stop saying this.

Unless you're logging into a new computer, your credentials are saved onto your computer so you can instantly enter offline mode if things go belly-up on Steam's side. Sure, your multiplayer games are screwed, but piracy won't help that.

So on Steam, you have one extra button press than normal if it all goes wrong.

Pirated stuff, however, often requires re-mounting of the image and a few other things to bypass the DRM if your system freaks out (source: friend), so it's not the wondrous no-effort alternative people like to pretend it is.
Hmm yes mostly that's true, except yesterday staika and I encountered a fun little bug where running his net through his modem rather than the router (cutting out a middle man) essentially made steam unable to connect, and it even refused to connect in offline mode.

Steam is very far from perfect, and whilst I've mostly been able to play games whilst it's been offon/off/on/off/on the last 4 or 5 weeks it really is starting to grate when I'm after some multiplayer or when I want to check the store or finally get round to flogging those damned trading cards/
Oh, I believe it. I just don't like it when people bring up "piracy is easier" when it really isn't.
 

The White Hunter

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Oct 19, 2011
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lacktheknack said:
The White Hunter said:
lacktheknack said:
Kathinka said:
the only logical conclusion is that gabe spilled his tripple sugar orange smoothy over the steam servers again.

and this, dear valve fanboys, is why having a secondary software necessary to run the games we own is a bad thing. when the games that we bought with our hard earned money won't run when and where we want to play them, but a copy you can download in ten minutes from the pirate bay for free works just fine, then that's a problem.
I wish people would stop saying this.

Unless you're logging into a new computer, your credentials are saved onto your computer so you can instantly enter offline mode if things go belly-up on Steam's side. Sure, your multiplayer games are screwed, but piracy won't help that.

So on Steam, you have one extra button press than normal if it all goes wrong.

Pirated stuff, however, often requires re-mounting of the image and a few other things to bypass the DRM if your system freaks out (source: friend), so it's not the wondrous no-effort alternative people like to pretend it is.
Hmm yes mostly that's true, except yesterday staika and I encountered a fun little bug where running his net through his modem rather than the router (cutting out a middle man) essentially made steam unable to connect, and it even refused to connect in offline mode.

Steam is very far from perfect, and whilst I've mostly been able to play games whilst it's been offon/off/on/off/on the last 4 or 5 weeks it really is starting to grate when I'm after some multiplayer or when I want to check the store or finally get round to flogging those damned trading cards/
Oh, I believe it. I just don't like it when people bring up "piracy is easier" when it really isn't.
Easier doesn't make it right. I suppose they enjoy their trojans though!