(Updated) Steam Is Facing Some Serious Issues At The Moment

Aran Suddi 20 Comments

Some of you may be trying to access Steam right now to browse the sale, and spend some of that Christmas money you may have received. However as of right now there are serious issues going on with the Steam storefront, Many people, including myself, keep seeing the store in different languages and have been able to access the wishlists and payment information screens of random accounts. The game library seems to be accessible without issue.

It is unclear what has caused this issue to suddenly pop up, but the best advice is do not buy anything off Steam until the issue is resolved. My personal advice is to delete your payment information from your account if you have it stored there, and if you can access it. I can’t get to mine but some of you may be able to get to yours. If you have a PayPal account linked to your Steam account you can remove it. Follow the steps below.

  • Go to Paypal.com and log in to your account.
  • Access the Settings menu.
  • Scroll down to Payment Settings and click on Pre-approved payments.
  • Click on WWW.Steampowered.com if it is in the list.
  • Select Cancel and then Yes when the window pops up.
  • The Status should now say “Cancelled on” with the date of cancellation next to it.

Since it is Christmas I wouldn’t expect a response from Valve yet, but here’s hoping they have a team working to fix this.

Update: It appears this is a caching issue which is causing people to access other people’s accounts. There’s no evidence that this is a security breach, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

Update 2: Valve appears to have shut down access to the Steam store and account settings.

Update 3: A response has been issued on the Steam Forums.

We’ve gotten reports that people sometimes see other people’s account information on the account page. Valve has been made aware of this and are working on a fix.

Some frequently asked questions:
– No, Steam is not hacked

– Creditcard info and phone numbers are, as required by law, censored and not visible to users

Update 4: Steam is back online following the errors. However, there seems to be a snag when verifying account information.

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20 Comments

  1. Bugger…..

  2. This is going to have massive implications of its true, I think steam being hacked would be slightly better than steam coding being that bad that it’s just randomly giving people’s account details out.

    Unless I’m misunderstanding what’s happened.

    • I’ll rephrase that to randomly giving people access to others account details.

  3. Christmas Day. I don’t believe in coincidence..

    Of course they were hacked.

    • Credit cards details of other AEE visible it seems

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/25/steam_snafu/

    • PSN had trouble sending verification emails out to new members yesterday. So must have been hacked too then?!

      • Why? All I know, this is 1000x worse than the PSN hack (which didn’t actually expose any payment details, and nothing else has ever turned up),this has exposed REAL data, REAL payment details, and yet didn’t even make it to the BBC News technology page. The PSN hack was making headlines for months, as if someone was kicking the embers in the fire every few days, ensuring they were benefitting from all the negative press.

        This time, things are different it seems, its quietly being buried. No money in running with the story????

      • You mean the hack that took down the entire PlayStation Network across three continents for over a month?

      • Yes, and your point? The recovery from the hack didn’t take a month, but there was no point putting it back up without understanding and addressing the issues, that is what took the time.

        As I said, nothing of any value was ever obtained in the PSN hack, all payment details were encrypted and not accessed.

        Steam, it was all there, in the open for anyone to view. Yet not even footnote coverage outside the tech press. Goes to show how money is what motivates

      • Well your own logic was you don’t believe in coincidences with steam having trouble on Xmas day, so I assumed you’d think the same with psn having problems on the same day. But of course, your lack of belief on coincidences is overridden by your love of Sony!

        Ps this is nothing like the scale of the psn hack. 77m users info stolen and cards used for purchases. Get real, as Gordon Brown once said.

      • You know that Credit card details were never accessed in the PSN haxk? Also nkne of the data has ever appeared, so it far more likely that nothing was actually accessed, bit Sony could never prove it wasn’t accessed, and had to paint the worst case scenario, for which the idiot press crucified them for.

        The steam issue was real, affected 10.6m real users data and payment data.

      • Yep, real details were there with Steam. The PSN hack was only minor, it wasn’t as though the hackers could take your email and password, lock you out of your SEN account and then look at your payment details. Oh wait.

      • How dare the press and everyone else get pissed off at Sony for having shoddy security measures and for the way they handled it. How dare they and us! Shame on them and us! SHAME!

      • PSN thing was a glitch, not a hack.

      • I guess I’ll try to clarify to AngryCoward again. I wasn’t referencing the 2011 psn hack, rather just humouring his theory that steam was definitely hacked because it had problems on Xmas day, so psn must have too as it also had problems on Xmas day. Sadly he sae the words “psn” & “hack” and immediately went into psn ’11 hack defence mode without reading what I put properly!!!

      • I did not know that. I geuinely believed it was a hack unless there was another long period of downtime.

  4. It would be best for Valve if Steam was hacked then it turning out to be really shoddy coding and the servers crapping themselves thus leading to probably the biggest eff up of 2015! Even Sony had the decency to admit that PSN was hacked. Granted, it took them a week or two but Steam needs to reveal what the fuck happened and well, i can see lawsuits happening along with it being very damaging. That and everyone’s dirty little secrets will be revealed. There are people now crapping themselves at that one game they are ashamed off being revealed to strangers.

  5. & what game that be, you can’t be meaning huni-pop I though that game was censored.

    But steam is more laxed then the other big three Sony, ninty, & MS while steam have its fault too I applaud steam for being care-free. By allowing patch by Devs themseves to make game uncensored.

    Isn’t steam wonderful that what vita itself could not steam can by having monpiece on there uncensored.

    • “Isn’t steam wonderful that what vita itself could not steam can by having monpiece on there uncensored.”

      Call me Belinda, but I seriously cannot decipher that code :P

  6. That’s really weird.

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