Update: matchmaking is now back to normal.
Epic have done a fine job of scaling with the Fortnite demand, usually getting on top of any issues and providing a mainly stable online game with little downtime. It’s certainly been more ahead of the curve than its closest rival, anyway.
However, Epic probably couldn’t have predicted that Drake would stream with Ninja and break Twitch records, leading to a huge spike in new players. The recent mobile version of Fortnite launching is also a pretty big deal, especially as it allows cross-play; there are a lot of people on a lot of different platforms trying to play the same game.
After playing a couple of solo games tonight (and not doing too hot, as usual), I loaded up for another go but kept getting hit with an error message.
Following twenty minutes of stubborn retrying, the official Twitter account for Fortnite tweeted out that they have had to disable matchmaking as a result of the sudden rise in popularity:
The love is strong! Due to an influx of new players, we're experiencing degradation with our matchmaking. We're disabling matchmaking and scaling up to account for this.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 16, 2018
It’s been about fifteen minutes since they sent the update out, so hopefully it won’t be too long. Epic did perform maintenance this morning to presumably deal with the surge of new players, which may have knocked something out of sync. It wasn’t running that well on my PS4 this evening at all.
Saying that, though, large updates and the ensuing issues have taken the game offline for a few hours in the past — here’s hoping they can find a quick fix, or get Facebook to lend them one of their mega-servers. They’re probably going to need it if the game continues to grow like this.
Want more Fortnite? Check out the following:
– 10 Best Fortnite YouTubers and Streamers You Should Be Watching
– Fortnite Mobile: Where To Sign Up And What You Need To Know
– Fortnite Battle Royale: 13 Easy Tips For Beginners
– Fortnite’s Best Landing Spots
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