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AWS Outage Disrupts Major Online Services, From Fortnite, Roblox, to Everyday Apps

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is facing a significant outage that has disrupted a wide range of online platforms, including Amazon, Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite, ChatGPT, and the Epic Games Store. The issue, which began in the US‑EAST‑1 region early this morning, quickly spread to affect services worldwide.


According to the AWS health dashboard, the first signs of trouble appeared around 12:11 AM PT, when Amazon confirmed “increased error rates” in its Virginia data center. By 12:51 AM PT, the company said engineers were actively working to mitigate the problem and identify the root cause. At 3:35 AM PT, Amazon reported that “most AWS service operations are succeeding normally now,” though a full resolution is still in progress.


Graph depicting AWS outage on October 20, 2025, affecting apps like Amazon, Alexa, Prime Video.
Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Oct 20, 2025, impacting Alexa, Fortnite, Roblox, Snapchat, and more across the globe

Widespread Impact Across Apps and Games

The outage has been felt across both productivity tools and entertainment platforms. Users on Reddit reported that Alexa devices were unresponsive, with alarms and routines failing to trigger. Other services like Perplexity, Airtable, Canva, and even the McDonald’s app were also affected.


Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed on X that the downtime was tied directly to AWS, saying, “The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”


Gamers were hit especially hard. Fortnite’s official status account acknowledged login problems, while Supercell reported “major downtime across all games,” including Clash Royale and Clash of Clans. Roblox players also faced issues, with more than 11,000 outage reports logged on Down Detector within an hour. Even Pokémon Go and Wordle weren’t spared.


Here’s a list of the major platforms and services that were reported as affected during the AWS outage:

Core Amazon Services

  • Amazon.com (shopping)

  • Amazon Web Services (cloud infrastructure)

  • Amazon Music

  • Prime Video

  • Alexa (smart assistant)


Gaming Platforms & Titles

  • Fortnite (Epic Games)

  • Epic Games Store & Epic Online Services

  • Roblox

  • Pokémon Go

  • Clash Royale

  • Clash of Clans

  • Other Supercell titles (e.g., Brawl Stars, Boom Beach)

  • Palworld

  • Wordle

  • PUBG: Battleground

  • Rainbow Six Siege


Social & Communication Apps

  • Snapchat

  • Reddit

  • Ring (Amazon smart devices)

  • Life360

  • Slack

  • Zoom


Productivity & Utility Tools

  • Airtable

  • Canva

  • Xero (accounting)

  • MyFitnessPal

  • Grammarly

  • Perplexity AI

  • ChatGPT


Other Services & Institutions

  • Coinbase (crypto exchange)

  • Vodafone (telecom)

  • HMRC (UK tax authority)

  • Crunchyroll


A Familiar Problem

This isn’t the first time AWS has caused widespread disruption. Similar outages in 2020, 2021, and 2023 left countless websites and apps offline for hours. The current issue appears to be tied to a facility in Northern Virginia, but the global reach of AWS means users across Europe, Asia, and beyond have also been affected.


For now, Microsoft services like Office 365 and Copilot remain unaffected, since they run on Azure rather than AWS. That’s a small relief for workplaces relying on those tools, though many teams are still struggling with downtime in Slack, Zoom, and other AWS‑hosted apps.

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