Yeah I first noticed this about two months ago. I conducted an experiment to test it by subing / posting in threads I knew would get new posts in the next 24hrs. I did this with about 20 different threads for a good sample size - and only about half of the threads showed up in my notifications correctly.

I've been testing this on and off for the last month, and I noticed a pattern - when steam maintenance happens each week, that is when notifications can get lost.

If you look at Sept 17th, it was a Wednesday. That is around the time steam maintenance happens each week.

My guess is that this is happening to nearly everyone (since steam maintenance effects everyone) - but that most people don't notice it because it's random and not reproducible - and it only has the highest chance of happening once a week during steam maintenance.

That said, I have notice this issue seems to be getting slightly worse. As there have been a few times now i've noticed notifications not working correctly during none steam maintenance periods aswell.

I'm not sure yet whether other factors like disconnecting your pc from online whilst leaving the steam client open has an impact on this issue.

Originally posted by Floid:

Yeah I first noticed this about two months ago. I conducted an experiment to test it by subing / posting in threads I knew would get new posts in the next 24hrs. I did this with about 20 different threads for a good sample size - and only about half of the threads showed up in my notifications correctly.

I've been testing this on and off for the last month, and I noticed a pattern - when steam maintenance happens each week, that is when notifications can get lost.

If you look at Sept 17th, it was a Wednesday. That is around the time steam maintenance happens each week.

My guess is that this is happening to nearly everyone (since steam maintenance effects everyone) - but that most people don't notice it because it's random and not reproducible - and it only has the highest chance of happening once a week during steam maintenance.

That said, I have notice this issue seems to be getting slightly worse. As there have been a few times now i've noticed notifications not working correctly during none steam maintenance periods aswell.

I'm not sure yet whether other factors like disconnecting your pc from online whilst leaving the steam client open has an impact on this issue.

I put in a support ticket. I'll update the post if I get any more information.

Thanks for the in-depth reply :)

Originally posted by Floid:

- cut for brevity -

Just to update you in case you wondered - I contacted Steam Support. This was their less than helpful reply :

Hi there,

Thank you for your reply

Unfortunately, we do not have a fix for you at this time.

Along with reports submitted directly to Support, the Steam team uses a number of community sources to help investigate the frequency and severity of issues like this. These issues are continually being addressed through Steam Updates. Support does not provide any information on upcoming or planned fixes.

Again, I am sorry that we do not have a fix for you at this time.

Steam Support (name not included)

It has been like this for a while, a friend can send me a chat message yet I get no notification of it. The only way I can check is open a message window to that friend and see if they have sent me anything.

The other notifications seem to work fine, friends posting in the same thread as me, community messages, etc.

Well I noticed that my notifications effectively kinda just stopped working over the past few days. But that may have been because of the recent DDoS on steam.

But yeah, whatever is going on behind the scenes, this problem is definitely getting noticeably worse - not better.

It's at the point now where random notification threads in my notifications list are actually just disappearing now - i'm not deleting them - they are just disappearing from my list by them selves, only to reappear days or weeks later when steam finally remembers that there was two new posts in that topic 8 days ago lol. It's crazy :(

Yeah, I don't have any new notifications in the 'bell panel' of the client since the 17th of September. New notifications will pop up, but once read, just disappear.

Randomly all my notifications updated and they're now populated from the 18th September onwards.

Originally posted by Axis of Lint (ADG):

Randomly all my notifications updated and they're now populated from the 18th September onwards.

Yeah I've been noticing that too.

At first I thought steam support had manually prompted for undelivered / unread notifications to be re-sent to my client.

However now that it's happened a few times now, I think whats actually happening is some notifications are getting lost or delayed - and then at some later date - steam re-attempts to deliver those lost notifications.

This is evidenced by the fact that i'll sometimes get random lost notifications delivered from threads that i've unsubscribed from lol.

I'm starting to think there is a more serious systemic issue at play here - rather than it all being because some notifications can get lost during steam maintenance periods.

Possibly the steam network is staring to show slight signs of not being able to cope with the sheer volume of it's user base.

Originally posted by Floid:

Originally posted by Axis of Lint (ADG):

Randomly all my notifications updated and they're now populated from the 18th September onwards.

Yeah I've been noticing that too.

At first I thought steam support had manually prompted for undelivered / unread notifications to be re-sent to my client.

However now that it's happened a few times now, I think whats actually happening is some notifications are getting lost or delayed - and then at some later date - steam re-attempts to deliver those lost notifications.

This is evidenced by the fact that i'll sometimes get random lost notifications delivered from threads that i've unsubscribed from lol.

I'm starting to think there is a more serious systemic issue at play here - rather than it all being because some notifications can get lost during steam maintenance periods.

Possibly the steam network is staring to show slight signs of not being able to cope with the sheer volume of it's user base.

Seems like a reasonable assumption. Steam support was less than helpful regarding the issue unfortunately so it'll probably continue.