Published UEFN island stuck on "Searching for Server" indefinitely — matchmaking / session allocation failure (not client-side)

General Issues and Bug Reporting
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Summary

Published UEFN island “NEON MALL PROP HUNT” (Code: 3551-7219-8163) is unreachable via matchmaking. Client stuck on “Searching for Server” for 13+ minutes with no error code; reproducible across 2 Epic accounts × 2 devices (PC + Switch); other islands connect fine from the same setup. Island was working normally until ~24 hours after the v1.2 release on 2026-04-22, started failing today 2026-04-23 JST. Suspected backend game server instance allocation failure on Epic’s side.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Unreal Editor for Fortnite

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Matchmaking

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Fortnite on any platform (PC or Nintendo Switch confirmed).
  2. Sign in with any Epic account.
  3. Navigate to the Discover tab or enter island code 3551-7219-8163 directly.
  4. Select “NEON MALL PROP HUNT” and click Play / Join.
  5. Observe the client stuck on “Searching for Server” for 13+ minutes with no timeout and no error code.

Expected Result

Client successfully connects to the island’s match session, loads into the lobby, and begins gameplay — as it does with all other published Fortnite islands from the same device/account.

Observed Result

Client remains on the “Searching for Server” screen indefinitely (13+ minutes observed with no resolution). No error message, no timeout, no error code is shown.

Reproducible across 2 Epic accounts on 2 different devices (PC + Nintendo Switch). Other published Fortnite islands connect normally from the same accounts and devices within seconds, ruling out client-side network, region, or account-level causes. Island status shows as “Public” in Creator Portal.

Prior behavior: The island was published on 2026-04-22 15:49 JST (build v1.2) and functioned normally for approximately 24 hours after release (confirmed CCU > 0 in the lobby by multiple players). Failures began on 2026-04-23 JST with a 100% failure rate since.

Platform(s)

PC (Windows), Nintendo Switch

Island Code

3551-7219-8163

Upload an image

スクリーンショット 2026-04-23 123952.png
スクリーンショット 2026-04-23 123952.png3839×2159 8.02 MB

Additional Notes

Known Issues Checked (no match)

  • v40.20 Known Issues thread — no matchmaking / session-allocation issue listed for published islands
  • “Fortnite Creative Lobbies refuse to start servers after 5-10 islands” thread — different symptom (client-side, resolves with Fortnite restart); our case is island-specific and not client-side
  • 2025-04-15 “UEFN and Matchmaking Errors” announcement — that historical incident was resolved; no comparable current announcement

Hypothesis

The symptom (indefinite hang with no error code) suggests the matchmaker is unable to spin up a game-server instance for this specific island, rather than the client failing to connect to an allocated session. This points to a backend session/allocation issue on Epic’s side specific to this island, not a client, network, region, or build-level problem — supported by the fact that the island worked normally for ~24 hours post-release before failing.

Support channel context

I contacted Epic Tier 1 Support earlier today via https://www.epicgames.com/help. The chat was closed within 1 minute as “out of scope”. On retry, the Epic Support Assistant confirmed that Fortnite “Unable to connect” issues ARE in scope, and that my specific case should be escalated to the Creator Support / UEFN team, directing me to Epic Games Developers - Epic Games Developers. That developer support page, however, exposes no direct contact form for UEFN creators — only community and forum links — hence this post.

Impact

This island is part of an active sponsored Discover campaign, which I have paused to avoid ad spend during the outage. Rapid diagnosis and/or ETA for resolution would be appreciated.

Willing to provide

  • Full Observed Result logs if any client-side log can help
  • Reproduction video from PC + Switch if useful
  • Any other diagnostic info Epic needs

Thank you for looking into this.

3

hi @SoumaPants ,

There is a similar post thread and they are working on this problem

[CRITICAL] Connection TIMED OUT. - General / Issues and Bug Reporting - Epic Developer Community Forums

OP went to another server in other region by going into Fortnite Creative Setting and changing the Matchmaking region restarting PC as have many indie Devs in past.

This does NOT fix the problems but lets some work in UEFN happen

4

Hi @SoumaPants

It looks like you have min players set to 2, so you’ll have to queue with someone else to matchmake. It looks like you used to have it at 1?

1 Like
5

The status of FORT-1092520 changed to ‘Needs Triage’. We’ve confirmed the issue and it’s waiting to be assigned to someone to fix it.

6

@Flak — confirmed, your diagnosis was exactly right.

Private test result: Solo queue via private code still stuck on “Searching for Server”; 2 simultaneous queuers via the same private code matched instantly. That empirically verifies the gate was at Island Settings → Matchmaking → Min Players = 2.

Fix applied:

  • Island Settings → Matchmaking → Min Players: 2 → 1
  • Island Settings → Matchmaking → Overtime Target Players: 2 → 1 (auto-sync value that had stuck after the original 1->2 change)
  • Verse MinimumNumberOfPlayers in the waiting_for_more_players device retained at 2 — this handles gameplay-level round-start gating correctly (lobby waits until 2 players are in-match before starting the round)

Retrospective — why it initially worked:

  • 2026-04-21: I changed Min Players from 1 to 2 believing it should align with the Verse gameplay-layer setting of the exact same name. That was a misunderstanding of layer separation.
  • 2026-04-22: Island functioned normally because self-testing happened in concurrent pairs (PC + Switch), so the matchmaker always had ≥2 queuers.
  • 2026-04-23: Paid Discover campaign started driving non-concurrent solo queue traffic. At CCU ≈ 0, the matchmaker stalled indefinitely on every solo entry, surfacing as “Searching for Server” with no player-facing error or hint.

Live release: publishing the fix as rel 12 now. Will report back once the live route (3551-7219-8163) is verified.

Re FORT-1092520: the failure mode — indefinite “Searching for Server” with no hint about matchmaker-level min-players gating, especially given that Island Settings and Verse both expose a setting literally named MinimumNumberOfPlayers — caused a 24-hour diagnosis loop on my end. Any UX improvement (a player-facing hint about the min-players gate, or clearer naming / distinction between the two layers in docs) would prevent similar confusion for future creators.

Will mark this as Solution once the live route confirms. Huge thanks for the fast accurate diagnosis.

Also thanks @Jimbohalo10 for the region-change workaround suggestion — not used in the end, but appreciated as a quick backup option.

1 Like