Steam Downtime Discussion Thread

[MikeBlaszczak]

Originally Posted by Tibo

How about making 2M customers unable to play their game two times in a month for several hours?!

While I wish Steam was up 100% of the time, that simply won't happen though we get closer all the time.

Steam was down for half an hour earlier this week. That was the only time when all users couldn't play online. 30 minutes of downtime in a week is only 0.3% of the time; that is, Steam this week has been up about 99.7% of the time.

We're investigating some outages now where connections are dropped spuriously. So far, the issue looks to be at one of our remote sites. This doesn't affect all of our users; it impacts a little less 25% of the users in the US.

It's been many months since Steam was down for more than an hour. In the last six months, we've made significant improvements to the software which allow us to perform routine maintenance in increasingly smaller windows; our weekly downtime lasts about 10% as long as it has in the past.

I'm sorry these issues have impacted you.

[SD24]

Originally Posted by Tibo

So good job with l4d sells valve, 1.8 M retail, I would guess overall it's slightly above 2M with steam sells.
How about making 2M customers unable to play their game two times in a month for several hours?!
This can't continue like this! Get some better servers or I don't know what to make it not go down so often!
What a great day to announce DLC! With a server downtime that wasn't even planed!

Oh the humanity!

[Tibo]

Originally Posted by MikeBlas

While I wish Steam was up 100% of the time, that simply won't happen though we get closer all the time.

Steam was down for half an hour earlier this week. That was the only time when all users couldn't play online. 30 minutes of downtime in a week is only 0.3% of the time; that is, Steam this week has been up about 99.7% of the time.

We're investigating some outages now where connections are dropped spuriously. So far, the issue looks to be at one of our remote sites. This doesn't affect all of our users; it impacts a little less 25% of the users in the US.

It's been many months since Steam was down for more than an hour. In the last six months, we've made significant improvements to the software which allow us to perform routine maintenance in increasingly smaller windows; our weekly downtime lasts about 10% as long as it has in the past.

I'm sorry these issues have impacted you.

Of corse we would all like steam never going down. But thing folks at valve need to understand is:
Each time friends server goes down we cannot play L4D. We cannot play L4D! It's a real problem when you have millions of customers. It really is.
Also, we don't earn achievements which is obviously the biggest part of steamworks. Now I see in community that very few valve employees play games, but customers do, we like getting achievements.
For example, I planed a L4D for tonight with friends, unfortunately with all the downtime it wasn't possible, so I decided to launch dods, and continue on my achievements, but then I realized it's useless, I can't make progress because servers are offline.
Also same thing with TF2 bonus weapons. Hopefully this will be fixed with the item servers.
Friends server was down 1.30 hours on the third from 17 to 18.30, so it's quite often IMO.

We're not all in the US by the way, there are some frog eaters =(

Also, I remember why these threads were created on the 13, after the 4 hours downtime. So it hasn't really been months.

Yet again, I DON'T want to flame, but what I'm saying is, steam viability is obviously not good, that's okay, wrong thing is valve is counting way too much on it!!
You need to make achievements workable offline and make a proper server browser to l4d. It is NECESSARY!
Thank you

Originally Posted by SD24

Oh the humanity!

It's called being a customer.

[SD24]

Originally Posted by Tibo

It's called being a customer.

No, its called being clueless as to how hard it is to manage an infrastructure like that. No online service is up 100% of the time, its just not possible. Throwing more hardware at it won't solve the problem, weekly maintenance has to be done in order to ensure everything is running properly. Security checks, defragging, ensuring there are no overheating issues etc. all have to be taken into consideration.

Compared to how much Xbox Live and PSN are down and have troubles, you should be thankful of Steam. And Xbox LIVE is a paid service but has outages that last for upto 24hours.

Seriously, if Steam is down for few mins, go watch some TV, feed your dog or take a walk. Steam's downtimes have miraculously improved since its inception, and overtime, they'll keep improving. Just take it easy, its just few mins or at max, just few hours. Loads of other things to do in that time...

[skauneman]

Why don't you just change the time of maintenance to a more suitable hour, instead of in the middle of the day.

Would it be possible in the thread "downtime announcements" to edit your posts to let the community know when the downtime needs extended or has ended? Instead of making a new post to inform us After awhile we are going to have to scroll through pages of pages to find the current announcements.

Not to mention it looks nicer :P

[SD24]

Originally Posted by skauneman

Why don't you just change the time of maintenance to a more suitable hour, instead of in the middle of the day.

Except that its impossible to predict a hardware or network failure. Valve isn't going to do maintenance at 1am in the night, they're going to do it during the standard office hours since its their job.

[blazarian]

I'm currently dropping from steam continously. It's being like this for about 3 hours. I live in Finland, if this info is needed.

[*VeLeRoN*]

1, 2 and 3.

1.

Originally Posted by SD24

No, its called being clueless as to how hard it is to manage an infrastructure like that.

A paying customer doesn't have to be able to assess the magnitute of all challenges related to running steam. No. It's not customers' business.

2.

Originally Posted by SD24

Seriously, if Steam is down for few mins, go watch some TV, feed your dog or take a walk.

The post you are answering specifically mentioned 100s of minutes, and I believe it's not your place to tell other people what to do on their free time.

3

Originally Posted by SD24

Steam's downtimes have miraculously improved since its inception, and overtime, they'll keep improving.

They will, for sure!

Has anyone explained why we can't directly connect to a known or local server in L4D through the server browser while the Friends server is down? I've tried searching the forums and browsing this thread, but I couldn't find any answers.

Also, is this downtime the problem with the "Stopping search..." message appearing immediately after trying to join a game or create a lobby through the default matchmaking UI? It's not explained as such in Steam or in-game, and there's no downtime announcement for the current problems.

Thanks.

[SD24]

Originally Posted by *VeLeRoN*

1, 2 and 3.
A paying customer doesn't have to be able to assess the magnitute of all challenges related to running steam. No. It's not customers' business.

No they don't. At the same time, they don't need to be so ignorant about it. Most Steam users swear that they love Valve yet they fail to acknowledge the challenges and troubles a company like Valve faces. Hey, if you love someone, might as well understand their troubles.

The post you are answering specifically mentioned 100s of minutes, and I believe it's not your place to tell other people what to do on their free time.

I did mention minutes as well as hours.

I am not telling him how to live his life. I was giving an example as to kill some time if Steam goes down and you want to play... there's alot more to life than video games. No need to blow things out of proportion for the occasionally annoyance.

[MikeBlaszczak]

Originally Posted by Tibo

Each time friends server goes down we cannot play L4D. We cannot play L4D!

We're very much aware of that. That's why we work so hard to keep the servers up and stable.

Originally Posted by Tibo

Friends server was down 1.30 hours on the third from 17 to 18.30, so it's quite often IMO.

Steam was down during this period, but was not down for that entire duration. The total downtime was about 35 minutes.

[*VeLeRoN*]

Originally Posted by SD24

No they don't. At the same time, they don't need to be so ignorant about it. Hey, if you love someone, might as well understand their troubles.

Business relationships can't be based on love, and shouldn't be.

Originally Posted by SD24

I did mention minutes as well as hours.

No, you most certainly did not, not in relation to the post I quoted anyways.

Originally Posted by SD24

I am not telling him how to live his life. I was giving an example as to kill some time if Steam goes down and you want to play... there's alot more to life than video games.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Valve's purpose is to make people play thier awesome games, cos they are great and fun. It's not your place to tell people how to spend their time or teach them lessons on how much life there is beyond valve games, even less so trying to justify steam downtime.

To make it a bit clearer to you, imagine: I'm a very busy person, got 1 hour free each week, to relax and play L4D. And it's the exact time when the community servers are down.

C'mon. We all love Valve, but far-fetched arguments - these aren't needed, really.

Originally Posted by MikeBlas

Steam was down during this period, but was not down for that entire duration. The total downtime was about 35 minutes.

Steam was not down, but yeah, for feedback: I couldn't play for an hour or so after the downtime was finished. That's usually the case for every downtime since I've been around.

FWIW, I'm apparently in the less than 25% of the U.S. affected by the current issues.

[SD24]

Originally Posted by *VeLeRoN*

Business relationships can't be based on love, and shouldn't be.

I was just going by general "I Love Steam" notion that most people have around here. I am not saying he's literally in love with Valve.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Valve's purpose is to make people play thier awesome games, cos they are great and fun. It's not your place to tell people how to spend their time or teach them lessons on how much life there is beyond valve games, even less so trying to justify steam downtime.

I don't know if you're trying to mis-understand my point on purpose. I am not telling him how to live is life or anything like that, I was merely mentioning that IF and WHEN Steam is down, he can do some other things to kill the time till Steam comes back so he/she can enjoy his/her favorite hobby. I am not enforcing this choice upon him, I am merely making a recommendation.

C'mon. We all love Valve, but far-fetched arguments - these aren't needed, really.

Hey, this ain't far fetched, we're just sharing our opinions.