Update 24/12/2025 3:36 pm EST - The Steam store and website are back online. Altogether, the store was only offline for a little over an hour. You can go back to redeeming those gift cards and squeezing every cent out of them during the Winter Sale.
That said, we may not be entirely out of the woods yet, so if you're still having issues, maybe just give it a little more time.
Original Story:
If you're sat at home trying to peruse the Steam Winter Sale, but can't get anything beyond a black screen on the Steam app or an Error message on the website, fret not - it's not your family home's poor WiFi. Steam is currently down, and it's unclear as to when it'll be back online.
At the time of this writing, there's been no notice from Valve as to what is causing the issue, as Steam and the website have been down for the past hour. Thousands of reports have been flooding DownDetector since the issues started, and the unofficial status on SteamDB shows that over 250K people have visited the site to see what's happening with Steam.
It's an unfortunate time for the digital storefront to be offline, as surely there are millions of players around the world excited to redeem their gift cards for the digital storefront and see what they can knock off their wishlist at a supreme discount.
Thankfully, the Winter Sale doesn't end until January 5, 2026, by which time you can expect Valve to have fixed whatever is causing the issue. In the meantime, if you haven't already, you can head over to the Epic Games Store to redeem today's free game, The Callisto Protocol.
And once you're done that, you can continue waiting for Steam to be back online, since, as Adrian Chmielarz explained in a recent interview, the Epic Games Store isn't a home for PC players, but Steam is.
"People are not, basically, using EGS as their home, it’s not home to them. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but EGS doesn’t have written reviews. They don’t have the forums. There’s nothing to do there but to buy. So that will always lose to a shop that is also emotional and you can basically engage with the shop. EGS is a shop, and Steam is a community."
We'll update this article if Valve provides any notice as to why the store is down and how long it may take them to fix the problem, or if the store just magically starts working again.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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