Today's Steam outage may have been part of a massive DDoS attack targeting Xbox, PlayStation, Riot, and other game companies

Computer code reflected in glasses arranged in Danbury, U.K., on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. In the spring, hackers managed to insert malicious code into a software product from an IT provider called SolarWinds Corp., whose client list includes 300,000 institutions. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Steam went offline earlier today in an odd but thankfully brief hitch that may have been a small part of a much bigger thing: Xbox, PlayStation, Riot Games, and Epic all suffered a very sudden spike in outage reports at around the same time last night, and that's led to speculation that it might be part of a massive DDoS targeting online game services.

As seen in outage reports on Downdetector, the timing is awfully coincidental.