Cannot activate UT3 on Steam

I bought Unreal Tournament 3 on a whim (it was in a bargain bin by the checkout) and am trying to activate it on Steam. I typein the cd key but each time it hangs for a bit and then says the steam server is unavailable. I'm pretty sure this game works on Steam, is it just a case of waiting till the server is not busy? I've already added an exception to the firewall for Steam, don't know what else to do

Steam is down for everyone at the moment. Just wait it out.

Ah I didn't realise. If Steam is down does that mean you can't play games either?

You can do single player I suppose and if you have favourited third party servers you may get on multiplayer. Don't know how long they will be down. How much did you get the game for?

£4 from PCWorld

Not bad, but for PC World it's a miracle you got anything for £4; the end of the world must surely be nigh.