Did the Big Bang break Fortnite? Servers buckle under player stampede

Fortnite had to shut down its servers after an overwhelming amount of players logged in to watch the second showing of the Eminem Big Bang event.

On December 2, Fortnite’s highly anticipated Big Bang event was set to begin at 2 pm EST. The event would cover all of the upcoming content, including announcements of a collaboration with LEGO and much more.

The massive popularity of the Big Bang event caused queue times to skyrocket, with some players waiting for over an hour to join the fun. This prompted Fortnite to release two additional showtimes for the event featuring a concert from Eminem.

The events would take place roughly three hours apart to give time for the event to be reset. What Fortnite did not anticipate was that the second event would be even more popular than the first – forcing Epic Games to shut down all Fortnite servers in an effort to recover.

Fortnite servers crash due to Big Bang event popularity

Fortnite’s official status update account on Twitter/X notified players that they would be shutting down the servers for an unknown amount of time. This decision came after players began experiencing connection issues to the game in anticipation of attending the next event.

“We’re still working to recover from the overwhelming attendance from the first event showtime,” said Fortnite. “We’re taking Fortnite offline temporarily while we work to set up encore shows in a few hours. More info on our next showtimes coming soon.”

Multiple users reported that the queue time before the servers were shut down was even longer than the initial ones from earlier in the day. One user showed an image of their queue time, which was close to two hours.

Fortnite is experiencing ongoing server issues and is currently unable to accept players. For the latest updates on server status, check out our official guide.