What's wrong with Steam NOW?

Did you try restarting steam?

Restart steam, restart your computer, restart your router.

Try selecting another download region.

settings - downloads

reinstall steam? , i also had a problem 5 months ago, was a fault in Internet explorer or something

Harass Gabe over email.

It's because the game is shit.

I had a similar problem some time ago. Could do nothing with steam, but everything else worked fine.
My university wifi also was ok with steam (and it was set to block steam and online games servers!)
After a week, I discovered that my router suddenly set up DMZ mode without showing it. I had to set DMZ mode on and then again turn it off.
Remember Steam is not supposed to work with DMZ mode on.

Have a try, hope this works!

Also: Steam support does not seem to know about this problem. They DID NOT suggest me this when I contacted it and I had to figure out by myself. DO NOT UNINSTALL STEAM. That won't help and it will delete all your offline saves.

Also make sure the download location for steam games, is write-able and readable.

My friend had an issue downloading as well, after week of troiubleshooting, I told him to check his folder, and his folder was read only!

I believe there's a way to restart the the Steam client settings and revert all to default but I can't remember how... You have to erase some files on the Steam folder, mess with with "Run..." and restart your PC... I can't seem to find the exact instructions though.

as usual - praise The Lord