The Steam forums, run by Valve, are down following an apparent security breach perpetrated by a group of hackers, Eurogamer reports. The outlet states that a message board in the forums was "defaced" Monday night; the forums were subsequently taken down and replaced with a message from Steam stating they are "offline for maintenance."

Eurogamer reports that one Steam user contacted them saying that the hackers changed some text on the message board and sent some spam to registered users. The message board was redesigned to show a message from a website called Fkn0wned.com that documents video game hacks.

Because some players have reported receiving spam with similar content to the material illicitly splashed across the forums, it's possible that whoever hacked the site may have obtained the e-mail addresses of users who have registered with the site. No other forum users have come forward saying they received spam since the initial outbreak, and Valve has neither made a public statement nor responded to Ars' requests for comment on the incident.

As of this writing, the forums remain down and display only the maintenance message, telling players their "patience is appreciated." We'll be keeping an eye out for Valve's statement on the matter as well as for the forums to come back up.