A major AWS outage took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more earlier today, leaving millions of users frustrated and countless online services offline for hours. The large-scale disruption hit Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) US-EAST-1 region, affecting a range of platforms including Amazon.com, ChatGPT, Epic Games Store, and Perplexity AI.
While some services like Fortnite and the Epic Games Store have confirmed full recovery, others continue to experience partial downtime as AWS engineers work to stabilize systems.
What Happened During The AWS Outage
The issue began around 3:11 AM ET when AWS reported connectivity problems impacting its US-EAST-1 Region. The company later revealed that “the underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated,” suggesting a deep-rooted internal network problem rather than a typical traffic overload.
According to Amazon’s internal notes, the root cause originated from within the EC2 internal network. By 12:13 PM ET, AWS shared that it had taken “additional mitigation steps” to recover critical subsystems responsible for network load balancers and EC2 instance launches.
AWS stated that while connectivity was improving, some throttling of new EC2 instance launches was still being monitored closely.
Platforms And Users Affected
The major AWS outage that took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more caused widespread disruption across both consumer and enterprise platforms. Here are a few highlights from the chaos:
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Alexa: Users couldn’t connect to their smart assistants, leaving voice commands and routines nonfunctional.
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Amazon Ring: Many users reported missing recordings and broken notifications.
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Fortnite: Players faced login errors and matchmaking issues before servers were restored.
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Snapchat: Users struggled to send snaps and access messages.
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ChatGPT and Perplexity AI: Temporarily unavailable due to cloud backend dependency.
One user even shared that their Alexa alarm failed, throwing off morning routines—a reminder of how deeply AWS services are integrated into daily life.
AWS Response And Recovery Timeline
Amazon Web Services quickly acknowledged the problem and issued rolling updates throughout the morning. The company’s engineers focused on restoring EC2 and network load balancer stability first, which form the backbone of many cloud-hosted apps and sites.
The full recovery process took several hours, with Amazon confirming improved connectivity and gradual normalization by late morning Pacific Time. Engineers are still monitoring for residual effects to prevent recurrence.
Why This AWS Outage Matters
Whenever a major AWS outage takes down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more, it underscores how dependent the digital world has become on cloud infrastructure. From entertainment to communication and security systems, AWS powers an enormous portion of the internet’s backbone.
Outages like this serve as a wake-up call—not just for users, but for companies relying on a single cloud provider for mission-critical services. Redundancy and failover planning are now more essential than ever.
What’s Next For AWS
AWS has promised a detailed post-mortem to explain the outage’s root cause and outline measures to prevent similar incidents. The company will likely reinforce its DNS management systems and network monitoring tools to ensure faster recovery in the future.
Users and businesses will be watching closely, given that even a few hours of downtime on AWS can ripple through the global tech ecosystem, costing millions in productivity and revenue losses.
A major AWS outage took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more, exposing how intertwined the cloud has become with daily life. As digital infrastructure grows more complex, even short disruptions can have outsized impacts.
Whether it’s your morning Alexa alarm, a Fortnite match, or an AI assistant query, today’s outage showed that when AWS falters, nearly everyone feels it.
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