Epic Games’ wildly popular battle royale game Fortnite has been offline for over 24 hours as the company struggles to roll out a major seasonal update, leaving millions of players worldwide unable to access the game during the extended outage.
The issues began early Thursday morning when Epic took Fortnite’s servers offline to prepare for the launch of Chapter 5, Season 2 – a regularly scheduled update that typically brings new content, gameplay changes, and a refreshed Battle Pass. However, what is usually a relatively seamless process quickly became a prolonged ordeal as the update failed to go live as planned.
In the early hours, Epic informed players that the update would arrive by mid-morning on Friday. As that window came and went, the company continued pushing back the estimated release timeline in a series of Twitter updates, each delay compounding confusion and frustration among Fortnite’s rabid fanbase.
“We’re continuing the work to bring Fortnite back online,” read Epic’s most recent statement at 4 p.m. ET on Friday. “Players will be able to pre-download an updated version of v29.00 in approximately 5 hours. We’re grateful for your patience and can’t wait for everyone to be able to jump in.”
While this latest missive promises that players can pre-load the update files later Friday evening, it remains uncertain exactly when Fortnite’s servers will be back online and functional. Epic’s vague phrasing leaves open the possibility that even after installing the new update, the actual game may remain inaccessible for an indefinite period.
The server woes come at an inopportune time for Epic, just days after the free-to-play game celebrated its 6th anniversary. Fortnite has maintained a steady following of tens of millions of active players since launching in 2017, captivating audiences with its simple gameplay loop of dropping from a Battle Bus into a continuously shrinking map and fighting to be the last player standing.
But it’s the game’s fun customization options, memorable dances, and constant multimedia crossover events that have turned Fortnite into a true cultural phenomenon, with legions of devoted fans spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on seasonal Battle Passes and cosmetic character skins.
“It’s just so frustrating because I’ve been looking forward to the new Season 2 for weeks,” said Jessica Timmons, 15, a high school student in Tulsa who plays Fortnite regularly. “All my friends and I had plans to squad up and check out all the new characters and map changes right when the update dropped. Now who knows when we’ll actually get to play?”
Echoing comments seen across Reddit, Twitter, and other online Fortnite communities, Timmons expressed disappointment that Epic had failed to provide more clarity on when the game would be back up, or exactly what technical issues are behind the ongoing blackout.
It’s crazy to me that a game this big can just be down for over a day with no real explanation,” she said. “You’d think a company like Epic would be better prepared for a routine update.”
Indeed, while Fortnite has had several high-profile game outages and “Black Hole” stunts tied to past seasonal transitions, an unplanned downtime of this length is largely unprecedented. This has raised questions about whether the problems stem from technical challenges around Chapter 5, Season 2’s new content itself, or perhaps server infrastructure issues exacerbated by Epic’s upcoming integration with Microsoft’s cloud gaming platforms.
Requests for comment from Epic went unanswered as of publication time. On social media and fan sites, theories continue to swirl about what may have gone wrong behind-the-scenes, ranging from the plausible to the absurd. Meanwhile, Epic has stayed mum beyond its brief server status updates, no doubt hoping to have the issue resolved before needing to delve into granular details.
Players like Timmons just want to jump back into the game as soon as possible – ideally after Epic remedies the situation in a way that avoids similar extended blackouts in the future. But even once Fortnite does return, this particular outage may stick in players’ minds for some time as an uncharacteristic lapse for a live-service experience meant to be always available.
For now, the Fortnite community has no choice but to remain patient and await further updates from Epic. The game’s official Fortnite Status account promises to “provide another update after those 5 hours.” Undoubtedly, millions of players around the world will be watching closely.
