Fortnite is back but 50v50 is delayed, Epic says 'sorry' with some free stuff

Update: Epic has sounded the all-clear on Fortnite, but the 50v50 Limited Time mode that was meant to be live today has been pushed back to next week. As a way of apology for all the trouble, the studio will hand out some freebies to players: A free Troll Stash Llama in Save the World and a Back Bling gift in Battle Royale this weekend, and then next week, a pack of Battle Stars for Battle Royale players and Seasonal Gold for Save the World players. A detailed post-mortem of what went wrong, and how Epic will (hopefully) avoid this kind of gong show in the future, is also on the way.

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Original story:

Fortnite got Port-a-Fort grenades and a Replay system last night, but somewhere along the line it also suffered a database failure of some sort that caused problems for people trying to log into the game. Epic Games was forced to take it offline last night, and as of roughly 11 am ET today, there's still no ETA for its return. 

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Epic said it will update the status of the repair process hourly, and we'll let you know as soon as Fortnite is live again. You can also monitor the server situation at status.epicgames.com, and of course there's a Reddit thread filled with helpful advice.

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Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.