Steam Status
Steam is the biggest gaming platform in the world. Often millions of users are online at the same time. Because Steam (or it's operator Valve) doesn't provide an official way to check the health of its platform, steamstatus.io gives you a simple overview of the current network status. This includes the Steam Store, Community and the gaming servers for CS:GO, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2.
For the first, Steam downtimes are very rare! But in case something goes wrong there is a big community that will take note of the incident and it turns into a pretty large event.
Please note that the status of Steam may differ by your location. Also, there is the possibility of global network failures that affect the reachability of Steam but also of other web services.
Is Steam Down?
Steam is made of several independent services. If there are downtimes they are probably limited to a single service. Also based on your location the server status can be different. Users are connected to a nearby located server or data center by default. Which means that a user from the United States can experience downtimes, while for a user from Russia or China everything is fully available.
Steam server status
The current steam server status of the selected service we display to you is in most cases based on your current location. We resolve your IP address to get that information. So in case, you use a proxy, or basically, an IP that points to a location that differs from your real one it could be wrong. If you want to avoid that or like to see it more visually you can use our virtual health maps. There you can see all available locations that we are able to track at the moment. One more advantage with the maps is that you can see where it is down and where it is up. So you are able to switch to a nearby location if possible.
Live Maps To View The Status
Our live maps are indicating in a pretty cool way how the status of the steam network is right at the moment. The available locations are different for every map and part of the network. By watching for the speed and color of the dot at your nearest location you are able to see how high the load is right now.
Blue Dot
A normal or slightly speeding blue dot indicates a stable network status, with some higher than usual but okay load. Speed and reachability should not be affected right now. At least not due to Steam.
Orange Dot
A speeding orange dot is shown if the network is under high load. Short outages are possible, but especially a decreased speed while loading the Community, Store or other services. This can happen if a part of the network is down and capacities are lower than usual or due to an unusual amount of users, for example during the famous Steam Sales.
Red Dot
The highest level of an outage is indicated by a slowly pulsating red dot. In this case, we are not able to reach the part of the network and it may be completely down. But stay strong! It should be back online very soon.
What to do if Steam is down?
If Steam is down you can't do much. Contacting the Steam Support won't help as they probably already know about an outage. Instead, just wait and take a break. To be notified of changes you can follow us at your favorite service!
How do we monitor the status?
To monitor the Steam status we use different ways based on the selected service. Steam itself provides an API that delivers information about the number of live users and the gaming servers. This includes CS:GO, Dota, and Team Fortress. All status information regarding these topics is based on the information that Steam provides. Also, the Web API availability is somehow based on that. We simply track if we are able to access the Web API, it responses and response times.
For the availability of the Steam Store and the Steam Community, we use our own technology to check the response and loading times.
Do I have to refresh the page?
To be up to date with the current status you do not need to refresh the page manually. Normally the views should update itself every 40 seconds. You probably won't even notice that. In case we can't do the updates manually this can vary. You will then see a popup on your screen that asks, or better said recommends you to update the status by a simple button click.
By the way, what is Steam?
Steam was introduced in 2003 by the Valve Corporation (previously a developer studio) as a replacement for the World Opponent Network. WON was used as the previous multiplayer platform for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic. The reason for this change was mostly because of the huge success of CS and TFC and therefore needed changes in the long run.
Moreover, Valve had the idea to use Steam not just as their new multiplayer platform but also as a new way to distribute computer games. Half-Life 2 was the first game that required the Steam client to be playable at all. From now on games can be bought online on Steam with a direct download, but also updated or expanded with add-ons. Beside Valve also other publishers were able to sell their games on Steam soon. As the profit margin by online distribution was much higher it was highly appreciated by the most studios and publishers.
In 2007 the Steam Community was introduced. Users are now able to create a public profile with visible images and texts, but also statistics about the owned games and activity. Friends, groups or clans, as well as the text and voice chats, brought a huge change and are probably responsible for a big portion of Steam's and Valve's success.
Within games, the community is usable with the Steam Overlay. This solidified the connection between (online) community and gaming even more.
The connection between games and online services is one of the main reasons why a properly uptime of the Steam servers is very important for its users.