Fortnite is finally back after some of its longest unplanned downtime ever

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Fortnite (opens in new tab) Battle Royale’s extended downtime is finally at an end, according to updates from the developers and a quick, definitely-not-playing-on-work-hours test from yours truly. Though the game is semi-regularly taken offline to apply updates and address server stability issues, this was the longest period of time that Fortnite has been offline since its popularity started skyrocketing early this year.

Here’s the official word from Epic:

Services should begin to recover over the next couple of hours. Due to issues with our account system, players on PS4 will be unable to login for an additional period of time. We’re sorry for the extended downtime. We’ll update you in an hour.April 12, 2018

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The Battle Bus once again operational! Hop in and hop on 🙂 🚍🎉April 12, 2018

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Epic identified issues with Fortnite’s account services at around 2 pm PDT on Wednesday and the studio took its servers offline for emergency maintenance (opens in new tab) about five hours after that. That means the official downtime lasted at least 16 hours (potentially more, if you’re waiting to play on PS4). It reminds me of the old days, waiting hours upon hours for Fortnite update 2.3.0 to go live back in January (opens in new tab).

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I’m not trying to put Epic down – I think it’s pretty remarkable how the company has scaled up its infrastructure to account for Fortnite’s phenom status while still delivering regular updates filled with cool new stuff like the Port-a-Fort (opens in new tab). I can’t remember the last game I played that had this level of polish and yet still felt like it was still growing week by week (it helps that it was all built on the pre-established Fortnite: Save the World architecture, of course).

With all that pressure, it’s inevitable that a few breakdowns will occur from time to time. And people like me will complain, then the problem will be fixed, and we’ll all go back to happily playing Fortnite. It’s the circle of liiiiiiife…

Need some more 1v100 in the meantime? Check out our list of 10 awesome Battle Royale games (that aren’t PUBG) (opens in new tab).