During the evening of October 27, Steam users began reporting that the service was down and strange images were appearing when the app was booted up. Valve has yet to publicly comment on the matter, but it's also not a totally unique issue to the platform. Live services and apps go down on a regular basis, but some of the errors that are occurring with this new Steam outage are particularly odd.
Last year, Steam went down on multiple occasions, sometimes without explanation. With such a massive service, technical difficulties are likely to ensue and there are also times where services like Steam can go down for maintenance, though a warning is usually given. This is hardly unique to Steam either as both Xbox and PlayStation go down on a semi-frequent basis, resulting in disgruntled gamers taking to social media to see if they're alone in their struggles.
The latest Steam outage once again comes without explanation. Some users were able to play without interruption, but Twitter account Steam Status and other users noted they could not access their friends list, the store, and other online functions. Twitter user Megadetta also reported strange images appearing upon rebooting the app. At the time of publishing, Steam appears to be back online, but Valve has not explained why the service was down for nearly an hour for some users.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Xbox Live goes down more than PSN, so it's quite common for gaming services to have interruptions. Given how prominent these platforms are and how much money they generate, these outages are usually fixed rather quickly. Nonetheless, the respective companies usually address the matter on their website or social media platforms, but Valve has yet to do so. This would probably be easy to brush off if users weren't getting random images displayed on their computer when booting up the app.
Nonetheless, it's an incident that will likely remain a bit of a mystery. Steam goes down every so often and it will likely continue to happen, given it's one of the most popular apps for PC gaming. With the Steam Deck on the way, it's unclear if Steam going down would hinder the hardware. Valve has confirmed it's basically a handheld PC and can run other apps, so it's possible that the app going down won't have any severe impact on the actual hardware.
Sources: Megadatta/Twitter, Steam Status/Twitter