A widespread outage across Amazon Web Services (AWS) has caused disruptions to multiple major online platforms, including Fortnite, Amazon Alexa, and Snapchat. The issue, which began late on October 20 in the US-EAST-1 (Northern Virginia) region, has resulted in increased error rates, latency problems, and partial service outages affecting millions of users across various applications.
The official AWS status page confirmed the disruption, listing an “operational issue” impacting multiple services in the region. “We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region,” Amazon stated in its update at 12:51 a.m. PDT. “This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause.” AWS has committed to providing further updates every 45 minutes as its engineers continue to investigate the root cause of the failure.
Among the most visible effects of the outage has been the disruption of Fortnite’s online services. The official Fortnite Status account acknowledged the issue, writing, “An outage affecting several services on the internet is also impacting Fortnite log-ins. We’re investigating this now, and will update you when we have more details.” Players across multiple regions reported being unable to log in or access matchmaking servers, though Epic Games has confirmed the issue originates from AWS rather than its own infrastructure.
Other popular online services have also been affected. Social media users have reported difficulties using Snapchat, while numerous Amazon Alexa users have experienced connectivity problems, with the smart assistant repeatedly responding, “Sorry, the internet isn’t reachable.” A number of third-party platforms, including Perplexity AI, have similarly confirmed the outage’s impact on their operations. Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, stated, “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
Currently, Amazon DynamoDB is listed as one of the primary AWS components experiencing service disruption, though the broader scope suggests other dependent systems may be indirectly affected. AWS’s Northern Virginia data center is among its most critical hubs, powering large portions of North American cloud operations for both internal and external clients.
At the time of writing, Amazon has not provided an estimated resolution window. However, the company has assured users that engineers are actively working to stabilize services and restore full functionality. Given AWS’s vast client network, outages of this nature often have widespread ripple effects, temporarily impacting gaming, entertainment, cloud storage, and smart device ecosystems.
For now, users encountering login issues with Fortnite, connectivity errors on Alexa, or downtime across cloud-based platforms are advised to remain patient as Amazon continues its recovery efforts. The company is expected to issue another status update once progress has been made toward resolving the disruption.
