Watch is about 1 month old. 2 instances of step tracker being buggy last week. Restarting the watch seemed to fix the issue (does not bring back the steps it failed to count).
In an attempt to identify battery drain issues by factory resetting the watch, step tracker no longer works at all.
I guess I just have to get used to losing a function every 5 days and being left with an expensive paper weight in a month or so.