A lot of Steam users today will have been met with a frustrating sight if they tried to access the Store or Community through their Steam launcher – that of a grey screen with only an error code upon it.

This is the second time in recent days that Steam has been hit with problems, apparently caused by a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the system by two people, both of who have taken to their Twitter accounts (@chFtheCat and @LARCENY_) to boast of their ‘feat’. The reasons behind the attacks, the first one which took place over the 1^st and 2^nd of the month (depending on whereabouts in the world you live), are still unclear at this point but for lack of a better reason e-fame seems to the goal of the pair.

As of writing both Store and Community can still be accessed through the Steam website 90% of the time, so this attack has been nothing more than a minor irritation and won’t really make much difference to Valve, except possibly a negligible hit in the sales of the days these attacks have happened. Twitter has also acted by suspending the account of @LARCENY_ although his friend is still active, tweeting in a manner you’d expect from someone who does this sort of thing for kicks.

Valve still hasn’t commented upon the attacks, but the Launcher being taken down twice in so few days is somewhat concerning even if the site still works. It’s currently unclear how long everything will be down this time.