AWS outage renders some of the world's most popular online games inaccessible

A widespread Amazon Web Services outage has left millions of gamers unable to access some of the world's most popular titles, with Fortnite, Roblox, and numerous other games experiencing major disruptions on Monday morning.

The details:

• The outage began around 7:30am BST (2:30am ET) on Monday, October 20, resulting in many popular online services being left inaccessible, mainly those using servers located in the US-East-1 region. Popular titles affected by the disruption include Fortnite, Roblox, Pokémon Go, Rocket League, Dead by Daylight, and even Wordle, with PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and the Epic Games Store also impacted.
• AWS has identified the issue as a DNS resolution problem affecting the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-East-1. DynamoDB is a database service that AWS relies on for data storage, meaning if DNS cannot resolve requests, logins fail and the stored content can no longer be accessed.
• Luckily, Amazon has since issued an update, confirming that AWS is "seeing significant signs of recovery" as it works on resolving the issue but noting that there is a backlog of requests the platform is working through.
• Beyond gaming, the outage disrupted a wide range of services, including Snapchat, Zoom, Coinbase, Slack, Duolingo, Reddit, and several major banks. The impact of the outage is unsurprising given that AWS is used by over 90% of the video game industry’s biggest companies, with Epic Games’ Fortnite relying heavily on the servers.