This morning at about 8:30 PST, Steam was hit by a distributed denial of service attack. For about two and a half hours, Steam and its games were unavailable to users. We have since fixed the problem, and player numbers have returned to a normal state.

Steam's content servers are still busy with yesterday's update, but for the most part Steam users have been able to get up and running without problems.

The new email validation feature has been causing some users confusion. Our network problems have caused the validation emails to be delivered too slowly -- if you are waiting to receive your automated email response from Steam, please give it some time. We're sorry if this is causing inconvenience; the delivery speed will be improved soon.

Let us know if you're experiencing any other problems.