Fortnite: 'Major outage' pauses a global battle royal

Fortnite, the game with more than 350 million players worldwide, was inaccessible for several hours on Wednesday.

Developer Epic Games said on Twitter that its team was investigating an issue on the gaming servers.

"Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We'll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online."

But at 2350 UTC it was announced that the game was back up and running. "Fortnite game servers are back online and the Winterfest continues!" The company said it appreciated "everyone's understanding." 

The decision to take the game offline came after gamers said they were unable to log in. Some players got a screen telling them: "You do not have permission to play Fortnite."

Developers were unable to solve that and other issues, prompting them to stop anyone from accessing the servers.

The Epic Games Store was also having problems.

Some of the game's most prolific players, who can make a lucrative living streaming their exploits on the multiplayer survival game for others to watch, took to Twitter to voice their frustration.

Streamer and professional Fortnite player Sypher PK even joked that he might run for president now the main outlet for his time had disappeared. 

Epic didn't say what was causing the "major outage" but the company's chief creative officer, Donald Mustard, did not sound too worried on Twitter. 

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