AWS denies Christmas outage as gamers report disruptions across Epic Games titles

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services has denied experiencing any major outage during the night of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, following widespread reports from gamers who said they were unable to access several popular online games and platforms.

Speculation around a possible AWS disruption began after outage-tracking websites and social media posts showed a spike in complaints from users across the United States. According to Downdetector data, more than 4,000 users reported problems around 9:30 PM EST on Wednesday, leading many to assume a cloud infrastructure failure.

Games and services linked to Epic Games were among the most frequently mentioned. Players reported issues accessing Fortnite, Arc Raiders and Rocket League, while others also flagged problems with Steam. The overlap across multiple platforms fuelled the belief that a common backend provider was responsible.

AWS, however, rejected those claims outright. In a public response, the company said reports of an AWS outage were false and confirmed that its services were operating normally. AWS added that an unrelated event elsewhere on the internet had triggered inaccurate speculation online.

The company also reiterated that the AWS Health Dashboard is the only authoritative source for verifying service disruptions and warned users against relying on social media posts during high-traffic periods such as holidays.

Although AWS did not specify the root cause of the reported gaming issues, such confusion is not uncommon. Disruptions involving third-party services, authentication systems or regional network providers can prevent users from accessing apps and games, creating the impression of a wider cloud outage even when core infrastructure is unaffected.

Social media further amplified the situation, with several posts claiming AWS was experiencing one of its largest outages ever and listing multiple gaming and online services as impacted. These claims spread quickly as users struggled to determine whether the issue was local, platform-specific or systemic.

At the same time, Steam experienced a confirmed outage on Christmas Eve that affected hundreds of thousands of users globally for more than an hour. That incident likely added to the overall confusion, as overlapping service disruptions made it difficult for users to pinpoint the source of the problem.

AWS has urged customers and the public to rely on official status pages for accurate, real-time updates, particularly during peak usage windows when isolated outages are more likely to be misinterpreted as large-scale failures.