The hit battle royale game told players “You do not have permission to play Fortnite.”
Fortnite, an Epic Games’ battle royale shooter went down for more than five hours on Wednesday, and this time it wasn’t to help expand the game’s lore.
Fortnite players began experiencing login, matchmaking, and other issues when trying to play the battle royale game, and the issues quickly became severe enough for Epic to step in and shut down the game as they worked towards a solution.
According to a tweet from their status page “Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.”
The Fortnite Status Twitter finally tweeted to confirm the game is back and promised that there will be details next week (or next year) on “what we’re doing to help you make up for lost time” . It was also suggested that some people might see an additional gift in the game to open, but the team is working on it.
In addition to following the Fortnite Status Twitter account, which tweets when an issue occurs and when the issue is fixed, players can also bookmark the dedicated Fortnite Status Epic website that lists current outages, the most recent updates on the matter. and details about which services are affected.
A follow-up tweet at 3:10PM ET from the team said they were “continuing to work on a fix that will bring Fortnite back online and appreciate everyone’s patience.” As of 6PM ET, we hadn’t heard anything since, but at around 6:30PM ET players reported the game was working again, which we have been able to confirm.
When the servers initially failed, the Epic Games launcher would not even launch Fortnite, showing that the servers were offline, but would later try to launch the game. Unfortunately, after launch, as many players reported and experienced in a test, it simply queued you for about ten minutes and then failed to connect.
Starting at 6:45 PM ET, the game brings some back to life.
Server downtime is not uncommon during the holiday season, but it’s unclear if this particular problem was due to the influx of players or something else entirely.
On Christmas Day, the Nintendo Switch eShop was experiencing similar issues and players could not create a Nintendo Account, purchase games, redeem gift cards, or even browse the online store.
In addition to Fortnite, Epic also reported that its Epic Games Store is experiencing issues, though not quite as drastic ones. Users may experience “degraded performance” when attempting to log in to the game store, downloading and installing games, and similar. Rocket League is likewise experiencing some small issues, but it is currently limited to degraded performance when it comes to logging in and accessing game services.
