Before the start of Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 4, people will be treated to a Fortnite server outage errorbut the multiplayer game (probably) still works fine. The bug seems to be most noticeable in the Epic Games Store launcher, displaying the text “Server offline” when you try to launch the game from your library. Twitter account FortniteStatus has not yet confirmed the server offline error, although posts about not being able to access Fortnite are popping up more frequently on Twitter and Reddit.

We’ve explained what’s going on with the Fortnite server offline error below, along with some potential solutions. And no, this doesn’t mean Season 4 will start sooner.

From what we can tell, the Fortnite offline server issue seems to be happening randomly. No one on our team at GLHF has had the bug, and even some Twitter users responding to Shiina’s post about the bug said it’s working fine for them. If that’s the case for you, great. Carry on playing as normal.

If not, there are a few possible solutions. The first is to simply try to play the game anyway. Some users reported that they were able to launch Fortnite as normal despite the server message telling them that they couldn’t. Another handful of people fixed the problem by clicking the “Show hidden icons” button in the bottom right of their desktop – at the end of the taskbar, next to the clock and internet icon – and launching Fortnite from the Epic Games menu there.

A third possible solution suggested by Redditor brently49 is to launch the game from a desktop shortcut, which for some reason seems to bypass the issue entirely. Some people have said they deleted and re-downloaded the game and were able to play without issues afterward.

That’s all we know for now, but if there’s an official fix or other news on what’s happening, we’ll update you with more information. Once you’re back in the game, be sure to complete the Fortnite Beware the Wanderer quests before the new season begins.