With the Battle Royale world eagerly expecting to be jumping into Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 2 right now, the official Fortnite and Fortnite Status accounts have just posted some bad news with word of a delay.
Update: Fortnite is now saying the delay will be at least eight hours.
Hey everyone, we encountered an unexpected issue during our maintenance and we need to extend downtime at least 8 additional hours.
We apologize for making everyone wait longer than usual to drop into Chapter 5 Season 2 of Battle Royale. The team is working through this as… pic.twitter.com/gsu79mGMiJ
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) March 8, 2024
Players were expecting the new season to have gone live by now but the post on X reads: “Dear Mortals and Future Myths, we’re excited to get you into Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 5 Season 2!
We’re still working through some updates during downtime and will provide more information once our v29.00 downtime has ended.
Dear Mortals and Future Myths, we're excited to get you into Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 5 Season 2!
We're still working through some updates during downtime and will provide more information once our v29.00 downtime has ended. ⚡️
Because of this, downtime will be a few… pic.twitter.com/06tOdWRhrq
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) March 8, 2024
Because of this, downtime will be a few hours longer than usual. There is no explanation for why the update is taking longer than normal, but players who have been waiting to connect for the past few hours look like they may as well go and grab a coffee because it seems the launch is not imminent.
As you might expect some of the responses have been fairly “entitled” with people complaining about the wait time and that the message is a little vague as to an exact time but whatever issues are being worked through it is better to get them right than end up having to pull an update as happened last year when Spiderman’s web-slinging antics brought the game to a standstill and had to be removed for fixing.
The delay will also increase interest no doubt but will push the launch to a later time in the USA meaning the queues to get into the game could be longer when it does launch as there will be more people waiting to jump in.
Hopefully, everything runs smoothly though and we will be wandering around Mount Olympus battling Zeus and buying our new Battle Passes before we know it.