Steam 'Friends list' & 'Chat box' reportedly blank or blacked out for a section of users

Steam is widely known and used in the video game industry by millions of people worldwide. That said, it seems that currently some Steam users are facing issues.

More specifically, there are reports of players whose Steam ‘Friends list’ and ‘Chat box’ are blank or blacked out since a few hours ago.

According to reports, multiple Steam users are getting a ‘black box’ when trying to open their friends list and chat boxes. Also, some are unable to close those ‘black windows’ once opened.

The only way to get rid of the black box once it appears is to completely close and reopen the Steam client, and then avoid any attempts to open the Friends Lists or Chat Lists again.

Got on today and both my friends list and chat boxes are fully black. Been trying things from restarting, clearing caches, updating graphics card, opting into beta, opting out of beta, big picture mode, in-game overlays, etc. None of it works.
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Anybody else having issues with their steam friends list on the client? Mine is showing up black and I can’t close it

This just started today, I don’t know what happened. The only way to close the broken friends list is to exit out of the client and restart it
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The issue started a few hours ago and, according to affected users, nothing that they have tried seems to help resolve it. So, it could be a problem on the Steam server side.

There is still no official word on this issue from the Steam team. We will be monitoring the situation to update this story as events unfold.

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