Fortnite Servers Were Down For Five Hours But Now The Game Is Back Online
If you're looking to play Fortnite during winter break, there's bad news. Epic Games' battle royale shooter crashed for more than five hour on Wednesday. And this time it wasn’t to improve the game's lore. "Fortnite is currently unavailable, and players are unable log-in whilst we investigate an issue," a status tweet from Epic Games stated. We'll give you more information once we have a solution.
Fortnite game servers are back online and the Winterfest continues!
We appreciate everyone's understanding during our efforts to resolve these issues. We'll have more details next Monday on what we're doing in order to help you make up lost time. pic.twitter.com/ruLmG4xHgk
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.
The Fortnite Status Twitter eventually tweeted to confirm the game is back up, promising that next week (or, next year) there will be details on "what we're doing to help you make up for lost time." It also noted some people might see an extra in-game present to open, but said the team is working on that.
Our own senior entertainment editor Andrew Webster reported struggling with the platform, which was telling many players, "You do not have permission to play Fortnite." The company started investigating the issue at around 11AM ET, before the servers went offline entirely a couple of hours later.
Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue.
We'll send you more information as soon as we have a solution for bringing services back online. pic.twitter.com/B3wXvu5SL6
Epic Games launcher refused to launch Fortnite after the servers crashed. Gservers Later, it tried to launch the game, but it didn't work. Game servers It failed to connect after launching the game, as many players reported and we witnessed in a test. As of 6:45PM ET, players can launch the game and get right into the action.
Epic Games Store also experienced problems at the same time as the issue. Players reported that they couldn’t log in, or even access their games offline, around the same period. The Epic Games desktop launcher has been fixed so that you can still play other Epic Games games on your computer.
