Fortnite by Epic Games was reportedly down for thousands of users on Tuesday. At the time of writing, Downdetector logged over 1800 complaints.
On the site that tracks outages, users said they were facing issues with matchmaking and loading. “No games loading. Creative or BR,” one wrote. Another added “Matchmaking not working at all. Can barely even load up Save The World, let alone try to play a match there, or in BR.”
On X too a person noted they could not queue anything, which is usually what happens when servers are overwhelmed. “Is Fortnite down rn? Why can't I que anything,” they wrote.
Fortnite issues statement on outage
Fortnite issued a statement, acknowledging the situation and wrote “We're investigating matchmaking errors requiring you to queue up more than once to find a match. We'll let you know as we have more updates and this is back to normal.”
The Epic Games Status Page also notes there's been matchmaking issues with Fortnite. What had initially started off with an issue in the Middle East server region appeared to spread to other regions as well.
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{{/usCountry}}“We're working to resolve matchmaking errors in the ME server region preventing players queueing into a game,” Epic Games had initially said. Then they followed up with an update noting “We're seeing matchmaking errors in other regions as well, requiring you to queue up more than once to find a match.” Their latest update indicate the matter remains under investigation.
Thus it is unclear when things will be back to normal. Gamers, meanwhile took the chance to express their frustrations.
Fortnite down: Reactions from gamers
Several gamers reacted to Fortnite going down. One person complained “discoed me in the middle of a creative game, wont connect.” Another said “Private lobbies aren't even working.”
One referred to the money that goes into Fortnite and quipped “Billiondollar game havin issues.” On X the sentiment was similar. “Fortnite down when I want to play, come on,” one wrote. Another added “I was really looking forward to playing Fortnite after school today, so it was disappointing to find out that the servers were down. After spending the whole day in class, I was excited to relax, play some matches, and hang out with my friends online. Instead, I had to sit and wait, hoping the servers would come back up soon. It was frustrating because I had planned part of my afternoon around playing, and there wasn't much I could do except check for updates. Even though I know the servers will eventually be fixed, it still made me feel sad because I was excited for something that I couldn't enjoy.”
They shared an in-game screenshot which also noted there were matchmaking issues and the Fortnite team was working to resolve them. You can see the picture here.
Fortnite issues – How to fix?
To fix matchmaking issues on Fortnite, one can search for the Custom Matchmaking Key and ensure it is cleared. Then one has to hit Accept. The region can also be selected manually wherein it has to be changed from Auto to the nearest physical server.
One can try to fully close the Epic Game Launcher and then relaunch it. The game files can be verified to see if anything has gotten corrupted, which would then need replacement. The router can be restarted as well.
However, these fixes only work if there is no global outage. Given that Epic has admitted that they are facing issues on their end with Matchmaking, user-end fixes are not likely to work.