Yep, Steam is down (update: we're so back)
Steam briefly died and came back alive.

3:50 PM PST: It looks like Steam's back. Friends lists are working, downloads have resumed, and games are online. Was it all just a bit of oddly-timed maintenance?
It's not just you: Steam is down right now. If this were a Tuesday around this time that'd be no big deal (Valve does maintenance every week), but on a Thursday, it's a cause for greater concern.
The store will sometimes load, but it's running very slowly if at all right now. According to SteamDB, over half a million people have checked in to see if the service is down, and I bet a good chunk of them are Counter-Strike 2 players wondering why their ranked match just imploded.
Even if you are able to login, games which require you to be constantly signed into Steam—live service stuff like Destiny 2, for example—are currently inaccessible.
We've reached out to Valve for word on the outage and will update if we get a response.
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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.
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