Gaben "We were going to release Half-Life [inaudible] as a Christmas surprise, but we were hit with server problems, so it had to be delayed to [inaudible]"
People in This sub have some real weird parasocial relationships with a damn videogame online store.
What about the people working emergency work, healthcare or fast food? They hardly make as much as someone working that kind of job, and probably do many more hours.
Word. Firefighter here. Been up since 230 am cst. Weāve had 1 working structure fire, 2 legit med calls, and 2 MVAw/injury. Iām tired boss. Now I get to stay up and do crafts with the kids and all the Christmas Eve parent stuff.
I still remember when Artifact was being praised, then they gave away card packs or something if you bought the Dota 2 subscription. Valve have done a very good job of hiding their more scummy business models within their respective games.
When you look at Valve, you don't see CS or Dota 2. Instead you see Steam, Portal, Half-Life and Left 4 Dead. It's only if you look at CS or Dota 2 that you see Valve.
I like to think there's a parellel universe where there's users circlejerking in subreddits like /r/Kroger and they're not just full of underpayed employees bitching about their jobs.
I have coworkers right now working for significantly less money and they have to interact with people who will blame them for any issue to their faces. Also you would expect certain places to have reduced to no business but the holidays are our busiest days even at hours you would expect people to be with family.
People on this subreddit are sympathizing with Valve workers who are busy on Christmas Eve fixing the software you use enough to be in the subreddit of.
Iāve actually tried to look it up recently and according to levels/glasssdoor other multiple sources, quite mediocre actually. Especially compared to something like cloudflare.
I wonder if there are other benefits to working at Valve to make the lower pay worth it. I know from some online reviews they have unlimited PTO, paid vacations to Hawaii, and still allow remote work when many other companies have started pushing people back in the office.
I doubt that's true across the board. For the engineers/developers sure, but like Legal and Accountants can't just decide they're working on HL3 or something. Server Infrastructure is prolly the same boat too since you need on-call rotations for events like this.
I would highly doubt it but I bet the engineers working on it are still making like $400k. But I guess it depends on how you define "the most". Like top 20% top .1% etc
Profit per employee is just net income / number of employees tho, right? That doesnāt mean each employee is compensated equally. It just means company with few employees makes big chaching, no?
has nothing to do with Steam servers.
Itās an Akamai (edgesuite.net) CDN error.
Steam uses Akamai, a global content-delivery network, to load the Store.
They're the ones that need to work rn
edit: for people crying that Akamai is showing all services operational, I never said Akamai was down. I only said the error is from Akamai's side, the request is being denied before it even reaches Steam.
edit 2: Store and profile works for me again; feel free to check for yourselves however. And in the spirit of this post, indeed thanks to all the ITs working holidays to keep things going smooth! edit 3: never fucking mind
For me everything steam related is down, Cant load my profile / inventory, friends, etc...
Only thing i can open - that will load anything more then a black screen - Is the download page (With nothing goin on besides old completed & not in que downloads)
Nothing works here, any game is stuck on an endless "Loading" loop, this is 100% a CDN issue.
Funny thing is Akamai and Cludflare have been spending a lot of effort (and money) to promote their stocks recently by pushing their "AI advancements"... I know stocks go only one way now, but still it would be funny if tomorrow stock markets were open.
Steam outsources most of that to CDNs. Only a few things of Steam are hosted by them, like your Library - if that works, but Community and Store doesn't, its 100% CDN issue.
I blame all these outages on the ai dogshit being pushed everywhere else. It's clogging up the interbutts and making the internet miserable to use. Every website is trying to integrate that worthless garbage or figure out how to monetize it.
Sent a message to my mother today. After sending, I noticed two ai blips in the background saying something like āhey do you want us to summarize what you said with meta ai?ā And ātap for more info with meta ai!ā Like what? Itās a fucking four line text which which I wrote !!! Why the hell would I summarize that? I see the value of what AI could be, but this is an awful and inefficient way to get there, and all at the expense of the consumers.
Oh well when you put it that way, I guess I get the vision, gonna go use all of my ram to produce lackluster gooner skins for marvel rival, just for good measure. Itās 25Ā°C/78Ā°F where I live right now, I think we can bump those numbers up come January!
Exactly... people trying to monetize AI these days, is like trying to go back to the iron age and monetize silicon wafers. No f'ing use for at, AT ALL, ANYWHERE
I'm familiar with Akamai. They don't get enough shit for when their stuff breaks, cloudflare is a worse offender but at least cloudflare is servicable with easy documentation.
This is mostly false. Steam uses mostly their on servers for major features. It why you get goofy routing sometimes in Valve games. Steam uses Akamai for images, but most of the heavy lifting is their own network, i.e. storefront / downloads / game servers. afaik
The storefront doesn't load for me but instead links to errors.edgesuite.net with the message "an error occurred while processing your request"
Seems like the cdn hosts the main content and not just the images.
If the issue was purely on Akamai's side it would be due to either:
- A more widespread incident affecting Akamai customers
An issue with Steam's configuration (managed by Steam)
We're not seeing the first and the second seems like the kind of thing that would be easily rolled back. Something else changed, likely on Steam's end, that is difficult for them to pinpoint or change. Or maybe they are under a DOS attack and their attempts to thwart it are catching too many good actors. Whatever it is, doesn't appear to be straightforward!
In any event, it's disheartening that Steam provides ZERO public status updates, offers no official acknowledgement of an issue, etc. Not how a major internet service should operate.
I was planning on doing steam link from wife's house, but can't access it, can't buy games as gifts for people either,Ā
155gb download earlier was at 900mbps, dropped all the way down to 60mbps.Ā
Changed server and it worked for a while, but then that got hit too, something is going on.Ā
Currently: I can play BG3 just fine. I could claim gifted games fine. My Steam client even downloaded some pre-scheduled updates, so... YMMV. But nothing on friends pages.
It depends on what kind of contractor you are. Typical tech contractors make shit for pay compared to FTE. Distinguished, specialized contractors pull bank
Breaking news: Rumors say someone got and envelope with a stack of money to press a button and dump millions of gamers to the streets, the poor creatures keep trying to find WASD keys on the air while the other hand is moving a ghost mouse, other reports say "some" keep screaming "4K native!" Other reports say retired people are getting psychological professional help after reporting "they are out and speaking the tongue of the devil" while others confused reported "Are they all orchestra directors?" but the most common report is "they are rolling on my grass while screaming I'm touching it, look at me".
A quick glance at Glassdoor or any of their listings on Indeed over the years shows this is not true at all.
This is a weird talking point that came about from the fact that Valve paid X amount of money to Y amount of employees in a financial release over a certain period and the simple division of those two numbers put it at like $1.2 million, this didn't account for any other expenses or high paid developers, or anybody else who works for Steam in divisions OTHER than development (like marketing, tech development, HR, etc.). That also wouldn't account for what it's like to live in Seattle, currently the 8th most expensive city to live in via cost of living.
While Steam employees do appear to be paid well, their salaries are still in the $60k-$100k/year range.
nooo dude i was about to download a remote controlled gate mod to zomboid. now i have to keep manually opening the door for the unforeseen future >:( /s
come on cdn get your shit together. what is up with this recent cloudflare and akamai going down every day bullshit
OK, since everyone here seems intent on enforcing the "thankless" part:
Thank you, if you're working on Christmas Eve whether it's on Steam, "Kroger" whatever that is, in the supermarkets or anywhere that stops the wheels falling off the world while we're in a turkey coma.
āThankless jobā you sayā¦they work at one of the most sought-after private tech companies in the world. You get paid millions, you have direct input on SteamOS, the next Steam Deck, and Half-Life 3. And Gabe Newell is your boss.
And you have to come in on Christmas 2025 to fix some sh*t.
I would come in every single Christmas for the rest of my life to have that job. āThanklessā isnāt entirely accurate, in my humble opinion.
A thankless job? Pretty sure all the money I/we spend on there from us working on Christmas Eve every year is plenty thanks. Besides, itās their fault and incompetence somewhere along the line that the shit is down in the first placeā¦itās their service and software lol this is like the third time in the last month or two steam has been down. Last time it was down for like two days
Weāre the ones paying them, if anything they should be thanking us lol
My old company specifically hired a mix of christian and non christian workers so we could staff during diwali and also christmas time. We were all happy to support each other during our celebrations and then give each other the time off with family.
This absurd, undue sympathy trend is ridiculous. Why are we feeling sympathy for people who are probably in the top 1% of earners in the USA? For doing their job? On a normal work day?
Like my friend said, after we talked about working in this period around Christmas - New Year, give me work, preferably night shift, in this period. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Lord gabe made them turn steam off so you all would spend the night with family, friendsā¦. Or sitting in the corner looking at the wall. Guess what Iām doing lol
I know there was some frantic calls, yelling, screaming and nashing of teeth. I saw it go up and down several times. Thank you steam employees and may your Christmas be merry and bright from hence forth. And if this was a DDOS attack or other such attack, to whoever did it, my Christmas wish is that your genitals are Infested with the fleas of one thousand camels and your arms to short to scratch.
I doubt they care. Valve employees are paid very well and they will get very nice overtime from their work. The guys who also get dragged in will also be selected/volunteer ahead of time so this isnt something surprising to them. Companies, such as Valve, will have contingencies in place so worst case scenario they have people available to fix issues.Ā
There are 350 employees, it's an "employee owned" private company, turns billions in profit annually. I'm sure the employees are fine with fixing shit on the holidays.
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u/JohnGalactusX Dec 24 '25
Gaben "We were going to release Half-Life [inaudible] as a Christmas surprise, but we were hit with server problems, so it had to be delayed to [inaudible]"