Fortnite servers: is Fortnite still down? Epic Games servers and item shop affected by ‘stability issues’

Fortnite fans hoping to get some game time in over the Christmas break were met with a mass outage on Wednesday 29 December, as Epic Games investigated “stability issues”.

This is everything you need to know - and whether the battle royale game is back up and running.

What happened?

Fortnite players around the world were affected by an unknown glitch which saw users faced with a warning message stating “You do not have permission to play Fortnite” when trying to log into the game.

The problem became so widespread that Epic Games was forced to intervene, shutting down the servers for all players in the process.

The Fortnite servers were recently closed during the Chapter 3 update, however that outage was planned - the one that kicked off on Wednesday (29 December) was not.

Players will be happy to hear that the game is back online.

How long was Fortnite down for?

At 4:13pm on Wednesday 29 December, the Fortnite Status Twitter account acknowledged problems with the game, tweeting: “We are investigating login, matchmaking and other issues. We will update you when the issues are resolved.”

A few hours later, at 6:13pm, Fortnite Status wrote that Fortnite is “currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in” whilst the issue was being investigated.

At 8:10pm, Fortnite Status tweeted: “We’re continuing to work on a fix that will bring Fortnite back online and appreciate everyone’s patience.

“Fortnite game servers are currently offline while we investigate a solution to stability issues, and we’ll provide another update as more info is available.”

Finally, at 11:50pm, it was announced that the “Fortnite game servers are back online”.

At around the same time that Fortnite began experiencing issues, the Epic Games store also went down. At 11:57pm, the issues regarding the Epic Games store were also resolved, according to the Epic Games status website. 

Are players getting an extra present?

As part of the official launch of Chapter 3, players have the opportunity to collect 14 presents, including two outfits, over the course of Winterfest 2021, from 16 December to 6 January 2022.

Sgt Winter has been given the keys to the Winterfest Lodge, which is where he will be giving players presents. Wrapped up in the lodge are two outfits, two pickaxes, two wraps, a glider, contrail, emote, lobby track, loading screen, emoticon, spray and banner.

In its tweet announcing that the servers were back up and running, Fortnite wrote: “We appreciate everyone’s understanding as we worked to resolve these issues and we’ll have more details next week on what we’re doing to help you make up for lost time.”

In a followup tweet, Fortnite wrote: “Already opened all your presents but still see one extra present left to open? Sit tight, we’re working on that.”

Replies to the tweet have been mixed, with some fans stating that they should be given free items as an apology, while others have simply expressed their gratitude for the Fortnite workers getting the servers back up and running.

One person tweeted “5000 Vindertech bucks wouldn’t be a bad present”, to which another replied: “Stop having high [as f**k] expectations for compensation, they legit fixed s**t while they were on break.”

Another wrote: “FINALLY. 7 hours later we can finally play. At least give us tonight’s item shop for free for handling this situation so poorly”, and another user replied, “at least they tried their best”.

Other players have complained about skins and items being taken off the item store whilst the servers were down as well.

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