Fortnite is the super popular 100-player game available on PS4, XB1, PC, Mac, and iOS. Right now its unavailable and users are understandably frustrated. 5 hours ago, developers Epic Games tweeted that they were taking servers offline for emergency maintenance. We’ve seen that story before and that language suggests it was security related, with server maintenance typically scheduled to minimise impact to users.
When you have to take the entire global server infrastructure offline, the issue is clearly substantial. The most recent update on the https://status.epicgames.com/ page suggests they’re still working on a database upgrade process and the downtime is continuing. This kind of outage suggests they found, or someone else found a vulnerability and the only mitigation option available was to take the game offline.
Update
Over on the game’s subreddit, the developers have posted the following statement.
We apologize for the ongoing service issues, and are working to stabilize our platform.
We had a critical failure to one of the databases supporting our account service, and as a result our login and matchmaking systems were blocked. We limited account traffic and rolled out changes to address timed-out requests to account service nodes, but these initial fixes were less resilient than we had hoped. We’re working on more comprehensive upgrades to fully stabilize the system, but will need to go into emergency maintenance to apply them.
Update 2
The outage has now been resolved. Epic Games have posted an apology for the extended outage. As compensation to the fans, they are offering:
- For Battle Royale players, this weekend we’ll be offering a Back Bling gift that you can pick up in the store for free.
- For our Save the World folks, this weekend we will be offering a Troll Stash Llama in the loot tab for free.
https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/984508229626531840
Here’s the original post announcing the outage.
We're bringing the servers offline for emergency maintenance. We apologize for this inconvenience. We currently have no ETA on when servers will be back up. Stay updated with our status page here: https://t.co/3y0X6buriO
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) April 12, 2018
