Major gaming services Steam, Valve, and AWS affected by widespread outages

Multiple major online gaming platforms and underlying infrastructure services experienced significant disruption, with reports indicating that Steam and Valve’s online games were partially down late Wednesday and early Thursday. Engadget confirmed the initial partial outages, affecting a vast number of gamers attempting to utilize the services during the Christmas holiday period.

The widespread technical issues were further attributed to server problems originating from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides backend support for numerous online titles. Hindustan Times released a comprehensive list of games affected by the AWS server issues, including popular titles such as ARC Raiders, Fortnite, Rocket League, and other Epic Games offerings.

These concurrent outages underscore the fragility of interconnected digital services, particularly when a central infrastructure provider like AWS experiences difficulties. The technical failure impacted millions of users globally, hindering holiday gaming plans and prompting developers and platform operators to scramble to restore full functionality to their respective services.