Steam knocked offline on Sunday by power failure

Steam was knocked offline for several hours on Sunday by a power failure at Valve’s data center. The downtime forced some victims to resort to archaic forms of Sunday afternoon entertainment, such as strolling in the countryside and conversing with loved

February 13, 2012 7:00 AM16

Several hours of Steam downtime on Sunday left poor PC gamers unable to play their Steam games, caused by a power failure at Valve’s data center. Initial reports suggest some of the desperate afflicted resorted to archaic and torturous forms of Sunday afternoon entertainment, including taking a stroll in the countryside, imbibing ale in a pub, and conversing with loved ones.

“Our data center’s uninterruptible power supplies experienced a power failure,” Valve’s Al Farnsworth explained on the Steam forums. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Over 5 million Steam users were online when the troubles began at around 10:30am Pacific on Sunday. Some members of our fine Shacknews community reported not being able to use any part of Steam, while others could apparently still play games. The servers were back up and running by about 2:20pm.