Steam Users Steamed

KrunchTime writes "The Steam network seems to be having some problems tonight. This is not good new for fans of counter-strike, day of defeat and other half-life mods. Some people seem to be able to log on fine while others, like me :(, cannot connect at all. The steam forums were filling up with invective when I was last able to get on. The forums now seem to have imploded under the strain of complaints. The question that was being asked most is why there isn't more redundancy on the log-in side of steam. They say that if one of the master servers goes down that the accounts held there become unavailable immediately. The other big problem is that while the Steam network is down even the offline games are unplayable. There was no sign of responses from Valve staff or forum moderators."

Comments

FYI

[Associate]

Fresh from the Steampowered forums:

If your Steamid starts with 0:0 you should be able to login with no problems. If your steamid starts with 0:1 then it won't work. 0:1 Auth servers are down.

Offline can still work

[doofer]

The other big problem is that while the Steam network is down even the offline games are unplayable.

This is only half-true.
Once Half-Life 2 is decrypted and fully running, it is possible to set it to be playable offline, hence not needing an internet connection to run it, and the original single player games can be played from their original applications, not through steam.

Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS

[TomHandy]

Abuse was a crackdotcom game.... I don't think id had anything to do with it.

Re:ofline games are fun

[Canadian_Daemon]

combustion? since when was boiling water a chemical reaction? But yah, other than the incredible lack of science, funny joke.

Re:You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for.

[Dioxin Dude]

Try going Steamless

Re:I haven't played this, but what I'm hearing is

[malakai]

Well, in fact, it does not _all_ go down. You can leave the Steam tray app running and it will remain 'logged in' for an underterminate amount of time (at-least several days I believe).

I have been exiting and closing Steam completely when I finish for the night. Requiring me to re-authenticate each day when I want to play CS:S or HL2 again. This obviously has bit me in the butt.

Regardless, authentication is so lightweight and featureless that as a software engineer I find the fact the service isn't working unimaginable. I know we've all (those who've played MMOG) have experiecned this in the past, but come on. Surely by now the fault tolerent designs of corporate banking/trading software has finally seeped into game server authentication. Multiple masters, distributed, clustered, geographically dispersed, big-ip'd or hell even round-robin with 1s TTLs. Anything to provide some redundancy.

This smells more like a data glitch then a software/hardware glitch. I heard they were going to be doing some account maint to disable some accounts that were being sold on e-bay and passed around pirate IRC channels.

I'd bet heavily that this is the result of a very poorly formulated UPDATE sql statement. And piss-poor backup/recovery strategy.

Disable NIC

[malakai]

If you disable your NIC or un-plug your connection, off-line mode will kick in. But it won't help in this issue. Once you get the message: "Steam is having trouble connecting to the Steam servers." Then it's too late. Your offline login info is gone or invalidated:

Steam - Error
Unable to connect to the Steam network. 'Offline mode' is unavailable because there is no Steam login information stored on this computer.
You will not be able to use steam until you can connect to the Steam network again. To check the status of the Steam network please visit http://steampowered.com/status

Re:Since When...?

[SpecBear]

Actually, you can't just forget about it in offline mode. I tried playing Half-Life 2 in offline mode since I'm paranoid and told ZoneAlarm to block it. After a few gaming sessions, the software kindly told me that it needed to connect to the Steam servers, and I wouldn't be able to play the game until it had a chance to update.

Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS

[phriedom]

Many people have already pointed out that you only have to connect to Steam once to check authorization, and after that you can play single-player in offline mode all you want.

What I'd like to add is an explanation for why Valve created Steam at all. It wasn't just to get more "control" and defeat hackers and pirates. Steam could allow Valve to do without a publisher, as they could do all their distribution through Steam and skip the boxes on the shelves entirely. Think of not being beholden to Sierra or EA. IMHO, Valve chickened out and released HL2 both through stores and through Steam (which maybe makes sense IF enough customers are only on dial-up) which meant that people who bought the box have to have the disc AND all the Steam stuff, and it feels like a big hassle to them. If Valve had only distributed through Steam, the authentication would be transparent and everyone would think they were part of this great new paradigm and they were sticking it to "the man" at the evil publishing house and the crappy retail outfits. People would say: "Isn't it great how I don't have to keep track of a CD and I can go re-download all the old games I paid for 5 years ago to as many computers as I want to without any hassle. And they give me free content later as it becomes available without paying for an expansion pack."