On February 4, Some of Steam's Features Will Be Unavailable

Whatever the reason might be, Steam will be getting some downtime, and quite a few of its features will be down for the count as well. Valve has planned the service's stumble-and-fall for tomorrow, February 4 and it will start at 6:00 pm Pacific time, and is expected to not last more than three hours, so, Steam should be back and 100 percent operational at 9:00 pm Pacific time. While not all the client's features will become inaccessible, there are plenty of gamers that will be affected by the downtime.

The Steam Community, the possibility to download games from Steam servers as well as making any purchases from the Steam Store, will be be locked behind bars with no visitation right, but what will bother most gamers is that anything that uses the service's matchmaking system will also be inaccessible. One of the big titles that will be affected by this is Left 4 Dead 2, so Valve would better keep its three-hour downtime promise unless it wants to wake up with a boycott group on its front lawn.

And while the downtime is over a small period of time, with possibly even under the three hours the company announced, the voices of discontent that will arise could prove to be in a significant number. Recently, Steam broke the 25-million-active-accounts barrier, so, even if 0.1 percent of these users decide to express their frustration, that would still amount to an impressive 25.000 angry Steam-ers.

Even so, the chances that the company will take a lot of flak from this minor incident are slim, at best. Over the years, Valve has build a close relationship with its fans, fueled by constant updates to its games, special events organized and a general attitude of openness towards gamers. With campaigns like the War Update for Team Fortress 2, as well as the rest of the class updates, Valve has secured a rather thick wall of dedicated supporters, so minor slip-ups like this one won't even scratch the surface of that wall.