Update: Epic Games has confirmed via its official Fortnite Status Twitter account that Fortnite's servers are back online and the Winterfest event is continuing as planned. No information about Wednesday morning's matchmaking and login issues were shared, but they do appear to have been resolved.
Original Story: Fortnite's popularity is currently surging due to the holiday season and its player base having time off from school and work, as well as the recent start of Chapter 3 with a brand new map. That makes it absolutely the worst time for Fortnite's servers to go down, which is exactly what's happened. In this case, it was Epic Games itself that took Fortnite offline, citing an ongoing investigation into issues with logging in and matchmaking that started Wednesday morning.
Regarding the current status of Fortnite, there's unfortunately very little to share. At approximately 10:13 AM PT/1:13 PM ET, Epic shared a message via the official Fortnite support account on Twitter confirming that Fortnite is currently offline. Epic is using this time to investigate an issue and will share more information as it becomes available. However, Epic did not share information regarding when it expected to have more information or when it believes servers will be up.
While Epic didn't explicitly state the reasons for the servers being down in its Twitter message, it was part of a tweet chain with some additional context. Earlier this morning, Epic confirmed that it was investigating "login, matchmaking, and other issues" that were ongoing in Fortnite. Little is known beyond that, outside of the fact that Fortnite has dealt with similar issues for some time now.
It's perhaps unrelated, but there were also reports Wednesday morning that the Epic Games Store was also having issues with login and loading. The store is currently online, but it does feel somewhat slow. Fortnite technical issues that are breaching into other Epic products could imply that this is a bigger issue than just a Fortnite patch going awry. It could be a larger server problem, akin to the Amazon Web Services downtime from early December.
Regardless of the cause, Fortnite's servers remain offline and there is no current timeline for their return. Fortnite players should probably look to play another game until Epic provides more specific information about the problem and when Fortnite servers may be back online. That could be five minutes from now or it could be some time later.
Obiously, this isn't a situation anyone wants. Epic Games is likely largely out on holiday vacation, so today's issues are probably bringing in developers who'd rather be with their families. Similarly, players who can play Fortnite on Wednesday at noon are likely on vacation, too, and would rather not have their favorite game offline. Epic is at the very least reliable to address these kinds of issues as quickly as possible. Expect to know more about the situation as soon as Epic is able to talk about it.
Fortnite is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.