Fortnite: Epic Games responds to calls for Middle Eastern servers

Fortnite is played by gamers all over the world, but Middle Eastern players are having a hard time because there are no servers close to them.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is the biggest game in the world right now, but it isn’t truly global yet. Middle Eastern gamers feel like they are being overlooked, left to play with more challenges due to the fact that there are no servers close to players in that region. It causes a major delay that has a significant impact on gameplay.

Bahraini gamer and YouTuber Alaa “DvLZStaTioN” Ebrahim has led the charge to get Epic Games’ attention on this issue. Speaking to Kotaku, he had this to say:

"“If you are far away from the server, you will have some sort of delay in your game so pro players which are closer to the servers will have an advantage over us,” Ebrahim told Kotaku via email today. “That is why we need a server to match with people who has the same ping as us.”"

He posted a video to his nearly three million YouTube subscribers titled #FortniteMiddleEast servers, a hashtag that trended with nearly 3.5 million tweets using it (per Kotaku).

Other prominent Middle Eastern players and gaming figures have joined in, creating a movement that Epic Games can’t ignore. They previously commented on the server situation last August, writing in a blog post that they were exploring options for data centers in various regions, including the Middle East. Gamers haven’t seen much, or any, improvements so they coordinated a movement to try to help their cause.

It worked because, yesterday, Fortnite released a statement via their Twitter account:

Epic Games does a great job of listening to its community, doing the best possible job to provide gamers with an enjoyable experience. Hopefully, this can get resolved for all of the gamers impacted by a high ping due to a lack of server functionality.