Steam Store Down Briefly During Next Fest: What Happened?

Did you try to browse Steam today and get hit with a sad purple blob? You're not alone. The Steam store went down earlier today, showing the error "E502 L2 - We were unable to service your request. Please try again later." The outage affected both the client and web versions of Steam, right in the middle of the big Steam Next Fest demo blowout.

But here's the good news: game downloads and library functionality seemed stable. We at GamesRadar+ were still able to download games, make updates, and launch games, including online ones like Slay the Spire 2 and Arc Raiders. So if you were already in a game, you were probably fine. The real bummer was for anyone trying to find and download new demos—the store outage blocked that entirely.

Valve hasn't given any official reason for the brief outage, but Down Detector confirmed widespread issues. It's possible Valve joined countless other websites and online shops in an emergency response to newly discovered web vulnerabilities. On October 21, CERT-EU issued a security advisory warning of "Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP" that could enable remote code execution. Per Reuters, many government websites were also urgently taken offline.

CERT-EU recommended identifying PHP-based applications and preparing to patch as soon as fixed versions become available. They also suggested isolating internet-facing applications from public networks if immediate remediation isn't feasible. Sites and tools across the web have buckled in response to this PHP wave, so it wouldn't be surprising if Valve had some spot-cleaning to do as well.

Fortunately, the store seems to have been restored in short order. Now we can all get back to sifting through 8,000 AI-infested game demos—because, you know, Steam Next Fest must go on. Palworld lead has called Next Fest a gamble that's "still worth taking" despite the "AI slop era" we're in, noting that "the vast majority of it sinks to the bottom and rots almost immediately."

So, what do you think? Were you affected by the Steam store outage, or did you manage to keep gaming without a hitch? Let us know in the comments!