The official word from Valve is simply that it's "temporarily offline for maintenance," with no additional statement from the studio. Naturally users are concerned about their accounts.
The Steam store is big business and any successful attack against Valve will concern a lot of PC gamers who spend their money. Website owners of 'FknOwned.com' were behind the hack.
"Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks?" read spam email messages to Steam forum users. "It's safe, secure and undetected." I'm sure it's no coincidence that these 'untraceable online exploits' are thrown in gamer faces on the eve of Modern Warfare 3.
"Along with hacks, we've also got some general discussion sections, hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more. This site has been conditioned to meet all your needs in terms of resources so be sure to take a look and tell us what you think," continued the group's junk email message. "Thanks again, the fkn0wned team."
There's nothing to suggest for the time being that user accounts themselves have been compromised, only the main vbulletin board code for the discussion forums. Valve is yet to offer comment. Now why can't groups like Anonymous and LulzSec target these nuisance vendors and do everyone a tremendous favour?