'Fortnite' Might Not Always Let You Play Right Away — but It's Not You, It's Them

With a game as popular and populated as Fortnite, it's easy for players to want to jump in right away. Whether you're logging in for a new event or just trying to unwind with a round or two in Battle Royale, there are plenty of reasons to want to log in and drop at a moment's notice. But sometimes, Fortnite might not let you in right away. In fact, it may even go so far as to say, "You do not have permission to play Fortnite." Why would it tell you that?

Fortnite is a popular online game from Epic Games. The game features several modes that you can play with your friends. Save the World lets you run co-op with other players to complete various missions. Creative lets players craft special environments and challenges. And of course, Battle Royale pits up to 100 players against each other in a zany free-for-all to see who can come out on top. It's easy to pick up and hard to put down, but sometimes, it can be hard to even boot up the game.

Every so often, players trying to launch the game will be met with an unfortunate error message. Players can get stuck at the login page for the game with a message reading "You do not have permission to play Fortnite." It's an unfortunate occurrence that no one wants to deal with. It can happen to any player on any platform without a moment's notice. But fortunately enough, the message is not nearly as ominous as it appears to be.

Oftentimes, a message like this will pop up when Fortnite is undergoing a major update and needs time to download it. The recent update to usher in Chapter 3 was even preceded by an in-game live event that destroyed the old version of the game.

Unfortunately, there are times when the message may appear for less benign reasons.

There are certain incidents where the game won't let any players log in because of various in-game issues. In cases like these, the Twitter page Fortnite Status provides regular updates on what's happening with the game. They will often inform players of what Epic Games is doing to address certain fixes that need to be made to allow people to play again. In those instances, Fortnite servers will be brought offline while the issues are being investigated.

Unfortunately, there is little players can do if Fortnite's servers are down for maintenance. If you're having issues logging in, it's likely you'll have to wait until the developers patch the problem causing players to be unable to log in.

However, if there hasn't yet been a report that the servers are down and it's not during a time when the game routinely does maintenance, then there are a couple of things you can do on your end.

You can start by checking your internet connection to ensure it's working properly with your console. If that's not the problem, try closing out of the game and reloading it. Unfortunately, if neither of these problems fixes it, there's little you can do to rectify it.

More often than not, Fortnite not granting permission to players to log in isn't actually the players' fault. It's simply the result of game servers being shut off while Epic Games tries to oil up the machine.