Fortnite servers down: Players face 'extended' downtime whilst popular online game is updated

Online gamers trying to play Fortnite were left confused after the game’s servers went down.

The server downtime was announced early on Thursday after several players complained they could not access the popular game.

But players were left confused after the game’s website also crashed and they could not access its explanation that was shared on its Twitter feed.

It comes after the Fortnite gamers experienced three hours of downtime while Epic Games launched a new update last week.

The company apologised for the “extended” trouble caused today. The problem still had not been fixed after 6pm, but the firm said in statement it would be back online “as soon as humanly possible”.

In its latest statement Epic Games said: “During our downtime to upgrade to 2.3, we were performing recommended tasks to resolve a lingering database issue.

“Those tasks ended up causing the database to go into a bad state. After significant consideration, we decided our best option was to restore from a backup at the moment we took the servers down for the patch.

“Our first restore failed (due to issues *unrelated* with the quality of the backup) and we're working on a second attempt at the restore. “We're on it and it will be up as soon as humanly possible.”