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Steam outage not a result of security breach

Laura Parker
By Laura Parker, Associate Editor

Valve says this morning's outage was due to power failure; Steam is up and running again, but lingering issues need to be sorted soon, according to the publisher.

Two days ago, Valve head Gabe Newell issued an update on the security breach that affected the Steam platform and its forums last year, revealing that the hackers were successful in securing a copy of Steam transactions made between 2004 and 2008, including user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses, and encrypted credit card information.

Steam users were put on their guard again this morning, with the platform suffering an inexplicable outage resulting in both the website and the client going down. However, Valve has since set the record straight.

Steam outage not due to hackers.

Steam outage not due to hackers.

In a series of Tweets and forum posts, the publisher reassured Steam users that the outage was due to a power failure from what is supposed to be Valve's "uninterruptible" power source.

"Our datacentre's uninterruptible power supplies experienced a power failure," Valve posted on the Steam forums. "The power is back on now, and we're working to get service restored as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

An uninterruptible power supply provides emergency power when the input power source--in this case the main power supply--fails.

Valve later updated its post, telling users that Steam is up and running at a "normal user load" but that a few lingering issues are still being ironed out.

Laura Parker
By Laura Parker, Associate Editor

Laura Parker is the Associate Editor of GameSpot Australia. She loves adventure games, sparkly stuff, Trivial Pursuit, cake, Master Chief, earthworms, and rhetorical questions. She once stole a sandwich from Peter Molyneux.

22 comments
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CodingGenius
CodingGenius moderator moderator

Sounds like the time my building's fire alarm didn't go off because it was on fire. :) @Frosty192 - LOL. You'd think they would have that extra layer of redundancy!

Marky360
Marky360

I hope this power outage didn't negatively effect the well guarded often denied Half-Life3 project there working on over there at Valve. I can already see the catastrophe now "Finally done with Half-Life3 hey who turned out the lights Oh No I didn't get to save NOOOOOOOOO" well lets hope that didn't happen lol

Frosty192
Frosty192

I think they need to get a UPS for the UPS haha.

KeMasta
KeMasta

Wow that's really unfortunate. Well hopefully they get everything straighten out soon.

Cwagmire21
Cwagmire21

I'd recommend for Valve to find their receipt for their "uninterruptible power supply" because it sure was interrupted. :P

med12
med12

about more than 5 million users were online the moment just before it went down.

Sohereiam
Sohereiam

credit card information usually isn't what they seek, but billing information, e-mails, and stuff like that, because they can be used in forgeries, information manipulation and several others crimes. @franzito Blaming someone else for everything is something that companies and governments like to do, in this age the main scape goat is "Hackers" to prove that, when that blackout happened on Brazil and Paraguay o 2009 they wanted to blame it on hackers.

Sohereiam
Sohereiam

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

Nissemean
Nissemean

encrypted credit card information from 2004-2008. I hope those hackers enjoy credit card numbers that already expired and are completly useless.

franzito
franzito

Blaming hackers for everything sounds like obvious. Not that I defend them but...

gauntlets_of_fi
gauntlets_of_fi

Did Dee Dee enter the data centre and go - "Ooooh! What does this button do?"

wezkilla
wezkilla

Still a better love story than Twilight

nyran125
nyran125

damn Black Mesa Scientists....another portal must of opened again and its screwed up the power at Valve. hmm...seems like a job for Gordon Freeman. But i cant save them if i dont have Episode 3 :(:(

darkagent7
darkagent7

I hope this doesn't affect half-life 2 episode 3 from delaying... AMIRITE?! XD

M-S-M-S
M-S-M-S

This is not the first time this happens, but it's not a big deal. You can still launch your games, and play in multiplayer mode. The only things that are affected are that you can't download games, and you can't contact your friends. Things I can live without for a few hours. @ampthos Indeed :)

brian_13un
brian_13un

That's Great :) Glad it's not a security Breach.

ampthos
ampthos

"Our datacentre's uninterruptible power supplies experienced a power failure," hehe at least they have a sense of humor

xxLordDavidxx
xxLordDavidxx

These things happen occasionally. As long as Valve make sure it's infrequent and they do everything they can to resolve issues such as these when they arise it's impossible to hold a legitimate grudge against them for it.

Darnasian
Darnasian

@TheArcade I'm here to correct what you said... No Online distribution service is perfect... Because you know...this article is about Valves distribution service not their development team for games or their games... And not every developer has an online distribution service...

parrot_of_adun
parrot_of_adun

@King-gamer It's a relative term, like calling New Orleans a "permanent" settlement.

TheArcade
TheArcade

Hey, no developer is perfect.

King-gamer
King-gamer

Then they probably shouldn't call it an uninterruptible power source. Good that it wasn't hackers this time at least.

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