Can Steam Discovery Queue be fixed?
Solution 1:
The cause is, like you proffered, in all probability a server overload.
As comments here and in other relevant threads suggest, this occurs more frequently during sales and other large events: in the Steam Community thread you linked, most users complain about not being able to get event trading cards.
This same overload - it seems - can also
- cause inventories to not show up;
- show impersonal (generic) pages (as suggested in the comments above);
- or, which happened to me regularly, give error codes upon loading pages (
Error code: -330. Failed to load web page (unknown error)).
I think (and I have little knowledge about these matters) the reason this tends to happen right after finishing a queue, is that these queues are fully preloaded in advance. This is substantiated by the fact that if you deviate from the queue and continue later, it will let you pick up where you left it.
Moreover, this would also explain it happening generally to users with a higher discovery count (since, I guess, it will take longer to parse the database).
An interesting comment in that same thread sheds some more light on a possible underlying complication:
The queue-generation [of Steam] works on the same principles as the post history: each request gets a fixed number of milliseconds of time to finish. If it cannot finish within that time, all work done so far is thrown out; the request is killed; and you get sent back an "oops! something went wrong!" instead.
As for circumventing this problem:
- Refreshing the page often works.
- Failing that, you can log out and restart Steam.
- In some cases, waiting for an extended amount of time before trying again, helps (which also corroborates the assumed cause).
A better question would be why this is still happening. In anticipation, and answering your main question directly: yes, but only Valve can fix this.