Epic Games shuttered services this morning ahead of the highly anticipated first chapter of season six, which introduces a massive Japan-themed map and Japanese heroes
Fortnite server outages left millions of gamers unable to play this morning as Epic Games moved ahead with planned maintenance, with players now learning when they’ll be able to play once more.
The fan-favourite Battle Royale game and other applications powered by its servers have been largely inaccessible this morning as Epic carried out maintenance necessary for Fortnite’s v33.00 update. The landmark update paves way for an all-new season, suggesting the downtime will be worthit for dedicated gamers.
The update started at 10pm ET in the US (3am GMT) and was scheduled to last for eight hours, meaning people likely wouldn’t have been able to thank the Bus Driver again until at least 12pm. But Epic has said all systems are operational several hours before that projected deadline.
Posting ahead of the outages on X, formerly Twitter, this morning, the Fortnite status team wrote: “Prepare to hunt and slay demons! Downtime for v33.00 begins at 10 PM ET with matchmaking ending shortly beforehand.” In an update on its site, Epic Games said systems were operational across the board at around 9.40am, meaning players were able to log on and play a couple of hours earlier than anticipated.
Publishers Epic Games said scheduled downtime affected several Fortnite services, including its LEGO version, and car-based football game Rocket League. They said: “This scheduled maintenance affected: Rocket League Racing (Matchmaking), LEGO Fortnite (Matchmaking), Fortnite Festival (Matchmaking), and Fortnite (Game Services, Login, Parties, Friends, and Messaging, Voice Chat, Matchmaking, Stats and Leaderboards).”
The planned downtime was used to allow developers to usher in a new chapter of Fortnite, with season six, chapter one starting today. The new content drop has been named “Hunters” and features an all-new Fortnite map with a host of extra outfits available via the Battle Pass.
Alongside the new map, the Japan-themed update introduces Godzilla, Big Hero Six’s Baymax, and Japanese surroundings like cherry blossom trees for people to take in as they play. While now largely operative again, the services are not running in their entirety, with one game mode, Reload, having been disabled due to an issue.
Epic said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “We have temporarily disabled Reload while we work to resolve an issue. We will let you know once the service is fully restored.” Fortnite fans will be able to play without issue for another two days until Epic completes its next round of maintenance on December 3.
The next round of services are scheduled for 6am UTC (6am GMT), during which people will experience “degraded availability” for in-game lobbies. The service degradation will last for two hours, with Epic warning that lobbies invites “and other functionality” may be delayed or sporadically fail.