On the morning of October 26, some PC and Steam Deck users reported localized service disruptions on Steam. The client remained stuck on the "Loading user data" screen, preventing them from accessing their game libraries or launching games through the client as planned.
Some users attempted to troubleshoot the issue, even uninstalling and reinstalling the client, but the problem persisted. Others summarized the situation as "Store available, Game Library unavailable." The Steam Store and Community pages remained accessible, with the issue primarily affecting the client and user data loading processes.
This disruption did not appear to affect all users, and the exact number of impacted users and geographic scope remain unconfirmed, so it cannot be considered a full Steam outage. While backend failures or security issues were listed as possible causes, there is currently no evidence linking the incident to a cyberattack.
As of the time this news was published, Valve had not yet issued a public statement, and neither the cause of the failure nor the estimated repair time had been confirmed. Similar issues in the past have often been resolved quickly, but there is currently no clear guarantee for a recovery timeline in this case.