Is Steam Payment Portal Down? Possible Fixes Explored

Here’s everything you need to know about the ongoing issues with the Steam Payment Portal, and explore possible fixes.

With the launch of Hollow Knight Silksong, players have reported multiple downtimes within Steam’s internal network. As a result, the Payment Portal went down in numerous areas. As per Down Detector and other server status tools, CDN stations have also been hit, resulting in the E502 L3 Error.

While you wait for Valve employees to fix the problem, which is fully server-oriented, these temporary workarounds below may also help resolve the issue for you. If you are lucky, then doing these workarounds can lead to the Payment Portal working again. Without further ado, let’s get started.

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Understanding the Steam Payment Portal Outage

Hollow Knight Silksong has been on people’s wish lists for years; as a result, when it launched, there was an overwhelming amount of network traffic. As a result, Valve’s servers buckled under the load. Processing payments is highly vital, and it has massive computing overhead. When the server crashed, it took the database and other existing child nodes along with it. As a result, when gamers tried to purchase something, they were halted right on their tracks.

Possible Fixes Explored

Picture of IP config flush command (Image via Deltia's Gaming | Microsoft) — IP config flush command (Image via Deltia’s Gaming | Microsoft)

Based on our understanding, the problem can be mitigated by changing your ISP. In short, there is a chance that your mobile data ISP has a better routing advertisement with Steam’s servers. At its very core, Steam’s payment portal relies on an encapsulated network path. Due to the massive network overhead caused by Hollow Knight Silksong, there is a slight chance that your ISP, alongside other neighboring ISPs, fell back to an inefficient path to traverse the high traffic requirement. This is because when you, or others, are downloading something, the caching concept plays a handy role; this is why neighboring ISPs (the ones peered to your ISP) also determine how good your own ISP is.

Switching over to a mobile data carrier can change this problem because the chances of people being online and with high network activity on Steam via mobile data are marginally less. Another thing you can do is use a VPN as a temporary alternative. They reroute traffic through their own encapsulated paths and simulate a change in ISP. Tools like GearUP Booster target Steam data flows, reducing congestion, but ultimately add latency. So, if you are purchasing something, latency isn’t a factor; what matters is that the payment registers correctly.

Additionally, you can use an elevated command prompt and atleast try changing your DNS and see how things fare.

ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset

Use any of the DNSs mentioned here under Windows network options

Google DNS – (8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4)
Cloudflare – (1.1.1.1/1.0.0.1)

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