Could not establish connection to Steam servers. (Result = 3)

[Shadstar]

Hi, I run multiple game servers across multiple server machines with multiple IPs however in the last 24 hours on only a few server machines I have been experiencing the following console stopping more then one user joining the game server:

Could not establish connection to Steam servers. (Result = 3)

I host multiple servers on the one machine but not all game servers are experiencing this issue.

They are all running the same commandline(other than +ip xxx and -port xxx) and I have even tried disabling the firewall briefly but the error still occurs.

I am unable to find a definitive resolution to this on Google so have resorted to the forums here.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to resolve this?

[Alucard Claus]

Did you find solution?

[Shadstar]

Solution: Ensure port 26900 is not in use by any other programs.

[✪ Darius狮]

same problem i need video

[killbilly {KBC}]

(( SOLVED ))

Found part of the solution on a game server hosting website, a little more research, and when implemented, totally fixed the problem:

ERROR:
Could not establish connection to Steam servers. (Result = 3)


DESCRIPTION:
Steam has a longstanding bug that causes it to not bind TCP connections to the correct IP address on the outbound.

This basically means that the game is reporting the wrong IP address to the HEARTBEAT server that lists your known external IP address to the world, so people can connect to you remotely.

Error will manifest itself two different ways, but both are caused because the game will not always update it's TCP IP Table Rules correctly,,, or at all!

The game will list to the world your internal IP address, such as 192.168.1.1, as if it's your external one, so nobody can ever connect to you remotely.

OR sometimes the game will not update when your ISP changes your external IP address periodically, so when you send a HEARTBEAT command with your external IP address, even though you might hard code the correct IP in your SERVER.CFG file, the game will still send the incorrect older IP address from the incorrect IP Table Rules the game never updated, therefore breaking the handshake that has to take place for you to ultimately appear on the in-game master server lists so players can find your server.


SOLUTION:
In your firewall rules, either in your router or the software one on your computer that’s hosting the game server (or if your situation requires both), force the port forwarding to ONLY pass UDP packets,,,, do NOT allow TCP packets to pass at all on the specific port your game requires to be open to allow outside connections.

**Because there are so many games available, you will have to determine your specific games needed port(s).**

Doing this will force it to fall back to using UDP, which does work correctly every time.

This is one of those bugs that would be super-super-easy for Valve to fix, but for some reason they haven't ever fixed it.

Good Gaming! :-)

Killbilly.

[MeMeLeLe | trade.tf]

I have solved it, follow these steps:
1 delete TCP port 27015
2 add the following port 27015 (UDP)
3 add another rule with port 27005 (UDP must be both)