Fortnite Crashed And Epic Is Offering Players Rewards To Make Up For It
Fortnite went down and Epic is scrambling to make up for it!
This article is more than 2 years old
Fortnite game servers were down for five hours yesterday, with the game saying that players had no permission to play Fortnite, and this time it didn’t happen to help expand the game’s lore, like the previously announced Chapter 3 did. Instead, Epic Games’ hit battle royale suffered a series of login and matchmaking errors, prompting Epic to shut down the games’ servers. Luckily, the game servers are now online, and the in-game Winterfest event has continued, with Epic Games issuing an apology and preparing rewards to make up to gamers for the lost playtime.
Epic Games first notified the players about the issues at 11:13 am ET, as reported by IGN. However, two hours later, the Fortnite Status Twitter account let players know that the game was unavailable and that winter break kids, and other gamers, wouldn’t be able to log into the game. A follow-up tweet at 3:10 pm ET from the developer said that they’ were continuing to work on fixing the issues and expressed appreciation for everyone’s patience. Finally, sometime around 6:30 pm ET, the gaming community reported that Fortnite was working again, subsequently confirmed by the Status Twitter account. You can see the posts below:
Besides reporting on the game’s status, the Fortnite Status Twitter also promised rewards to make up for the lost time, with perhaps an in-game present to open, but that’s next week or next year’s news, as stated by the team. It’s worth noting that unexpected downtime is relatively rare for Fortnite, and it’s even rarer that it would last for up to five hours. Epic Games still hasn’t revealed what might’ve caused the problem. About the same time the game server issues started, the Epic Games Store was also having problems, and players reported not being able to log in or even access their games for offline entertainment.
Those issues were also resolved, but it would seem that Epic’s solution was a short-term fix, since Epic Game Store still experiences login issues, with over 1,500 gamers reporting not being able to log into the store. The recent problems were first reported somewhere around 10:44 am ET today, and the number of reports grows by hundreds every minute. Yet again, the exact reason behind these issues remains unknown, and Epic Games Store still hasn’t offered any explanation or issued any statement on the recent development.
Admittedly, server issues aren’t that uncommon during winter break and holiday season, when all the little entertainment-hungry gamers are at home, comfortably shooting and clicking away, but it’s yet unclear if this particular issue stemmed from the influx of players or something else entirely. According to the Epic Games Status webpage, Fortnite logins are currently operating under degraded performance, again, and so is the Epic Games Store, which suffers login, download, and purchase and refund issues. All the Epic Online Services remain operational, except for social overlay and purchasing, while Rocket League shows signs of degraded performance in its Item Shop.
