Fortnite on the fritz as Epic struggles to squish multiple major bugs

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It's fixed some but not yet all, and login issues persist.

Fortnite Paradise - Paradigm's hand reaching out of goo
(Image credit: Epic Games)

Fortnite returned after unscheduled downtime of around an hour today, but a short while ago players became unable to login to the game. These issues seem to stem from a gathering storm of game-breaking glitches that all related to recently added features. The biggest bad seems to have been the Shockwave Hammer, a weapon that was designed to be powerful up-close with a gigantic distance-closing leap… except the cooldown on the latter wasn't triggering.

Thus as in the above clip, players could spam the shockwave hammer infinitely, granting constant super-leaps which makes someone a very annoying target indeed. Epic eventually disabled the hammer in all playlists, before announcing the weapon's return a few hours ago.

There was also an issue with the game's recently introduced vaulting mechanic, and same story: Epic disabled it but recently the feature has returned.

Things aren't over yet though. At the time of writing Fortnite is now experiencing widespread login issues, and a third problem remains. The deku smash ability, introduced as part of the My Hero Academia crossover, was removed several weeks ago, for the simple reason it is ridiculously OP.

This tweet showing the attack also serves to illustrate Fortnite 2023 in a nutshell.

There's no ETA on when this attack will be restored (or if), and means Epic has now introduced multiple items with season 4 that basically haven't quite worked out: though hopefully the fixes in place now will hold. The game's current login issues persist at the time of publication: Fortnite's current status can be seen here.

Epic's best-in-class support for Fortnite as a live service game will doubtless see that final gremlin squished before long. The game recently received an upgrade that, almost overnight, seemed to turn Fortnite into a graphical powerhouse. It's not all sunshine and lollipops, though, with Epic a few weeks ago accepting an eye-watering half-a-billion dollar fine from the FTC for failing to protect childrens' privacy.

Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."