Everything you need to know about the state of Fortnite

FORTNITE servers have been down as part of a planned downtime to install the next major update: Chapter 5, Season 2.

While game servers occasionally crash unexpectedly, the March 8 Fortnite server outage has been going on for weeks.

The game goes through this process with every major seasonal update, which happens approximately every 10 weeksCredit: Epic Games

The servers were last quiet on March 10, when maker Epic Games rolled out the latest season known as MEGACredit: The Sun

Are Fortnite servers offline?

Around 8:00 a.m. GMT (3:00 a.m. ET), thousands of users worldwide began reporting problems connecting to servers to play the game, according to Down detector.

The downtime will begin promptly at 8:00 a.m. GMT (3:00 a.m. ET) so game developers can bring the latest season to life.

Fortnite is expected to be out of action until 1:00 PM GMT (8:00 AM ET).

While fans of the game should have been prepared for Chapter 5, Season 2’s scheduled maintenance, it has taken some players by surprise.

“Squad is desperately trying to prepare for another Fortnite match while the servers are down,” said one user shared on X (formerly Twitter).

Another wrote: “Omg Fortnite is offline [right now] What am I going to do with myself.”

Why is Fortnite offline?

Fortnite often stops working when creators introduce new features.

And this latest outage is no different.

The game goes through this process with every major seasonal update, which happens approximately every 10 weeks.

So gamers are well practiced at turning off the controllers for four to six hours at a time – with the promise of rewards afterwards.

Each Seasons introduces new themes, weapons, map locations and more lore to the game’s storyline.

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