Steam Christmas crash: millions of players lost access to the platform
25 December 16:45
The Steam gaming service has experienced large-scale technical problems that have made the platform inaccessible to millions of users around the world. The failure is global in nature and has affected Europe, Asia, the United States, and has also caused serious access difficulties in Russia, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
When and where the problems started
According to the Downdetector service, massive user complaints began to arrive in the evening of December 24, 2025. The peaks of reports of failures were recorded almost simultaneously in several regions, indicating problems at the system level rather than local ones.
Users reported being unable to connect to Steam servers regardless of country or provider.
What features are not working
According to complaints, the failure affected key components of the platform:
- the Steam online store is completely unavailable;
- user authorization does not work;
- online modes of many games are stopped;
- the item exchange system and inventory are unavailable.
In fact, the service was completely paralyzed for some of the audience.
Why the moment of failure is considered particularly sensitive
The problems occurred during the Christmas holidays, when the load on Valve ‘s infrastructure traditionally increases. This is facilitated by seasonal sales, massive game updates, and an increase in the time users spend online.
It is during this period that Steam records one of the highest levels of simultaneous player activity throughout the year.
Possible causes of the outage
Valve has not yet released an official explanation of the incident. However, technical experts suggest several possible scenarios:
- a critical error in the operation of databases
- failure in the load distribution system;
- large-scale overloading of the network infrastructure due to peak traffic.
According to unofficial estimates, it may take several hours to fully restore stable operation, taking into account the restart of key system nodes.
For some users in Russia, the situation looks particularly difficult
Due to international sanctions, access to alternative methods of payment, purchase and download of game content is already limited, and the prolonged downtime of Steam further exacerbates these problems.
The Steam incident occurred against the backdrop of recent problems in the global Internet infrastructure. On November 18, a large-scale failure in the Cloudflare network led to partial or complete unavailability of thousands of websites and services around the world.
