Yesterday, many Fortnite players reported long queues for matches and timeouts while trying to play the game. The Fortnite outage happened during the holiday season.
R.I.P #Fortnite server pic.twitter.com/f2T08ExPKe
— Dimitri (@Soldier_Dimitri) December 26, 2018
Epic games knew about this issue and tweeted that an investigation is underway to find the cause of the timeouts and slowdowns when some users were trying to log in and play. Epic had told the players to check the status on their website.
We are investigating an issue causing some players to encounter a problem with game services and when attempting to log in. https://t.co/3y0X6buriO
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 26, 2018
TechCrunch noted this Fortnite outage and was able to replicate it. The game was continuously held for about five minutes and then timed out. Epic games reported a “minor service outage” that affected game services.
Within three hours of acknowledging, Epic games also issued a fix for the issue and let the users know on Twitter:
We've deployed a fix addressing the issues encountered earlier today. Login and Game Services have been restored and the elf is back on the shelf. Players that have earned the Take The Elf Emote will now receive it as a gift or immediately after completion.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 26, 2018
A member from Epic Games explained the reason for the Fortnite outage on Reddit: “Quick summary is that deploying a fix for elf challenge reward not being granted exposed a latent bug in our profile migration code (the code that fixes up players). This caused players to be kicked etc and triggered our waiting room. We fixed the issue and deployed a new backend, however, didn’t see a recovery in login success.
This ended up due to “sticky session” configuration having been lost on our waiting room load balances when moving them to ALBs. This meant that there was a 90% chance of having to requeue after hitting the front of the line. D’oh. This should all be fixed now and we are seeing a recovery in numbers/login throughout / waiting room / etc.”
Gamers have appreciated the company’s transparency in letting users know about what happened: “As a company, I applaud you for your transparency. It is highly unusual and I hope you continue to set precedence in this industry.”
Read next
Google is missing out $50 million because of Fortnite’s decision to bypass Play Store
