If yesterday morning you tried to access Snapchat, do some designing on Canva, or book a flight, and nothing worked, it was not your Wi-Fi doing you wrong; it was Amazon’s cloud services.
On Monday, a widespread AWS disruption cascaded through various global regions, laying waste to countless apps, websites, and online systems over several hours: games, airlines, banking apps; they all felt a rare digital cascade, reminding everyone of the interlinked nature of our online world.
What Went: The list of companies basically reads as a roll call of daily life:
Amazon, AT&T, Canva, Delta Airlines, Disney+, Fortnite, Hulu, McDonald’s, Pokémon, Roblox, Snapchat, United Airlines.
Back in the UK, Lloyds Bank and Halifax, among others, were also experiencing outages for online banking customers. Social media became rife with posts by disgruntled users: gamers locked out of Fortnite to passengers unable to check in for their flights.
By midday, AWS engineers confirmed they were contending with what they referred to as an”underlying DNS issue.” Which simply meant that the system responsible for directing apps and websites to their relevant data had meekly expired.
By afternoon, Amazon pronounced by way of a press release that the issue had been “fully mitigated.” Some requests would still likely be throttled as they would have to catch up. A few apps remained slow and glitchy into the evening.
So What Exactly Is AWS?
If you’ve never heard of AWS till now, it’s by direct design; it is supposed to remain invisible. Amazon Web Services is the backbone of the Internet; a vast network of servers that store data and run websites and apps.
Companies do not build their servers anymore but instead rent spaces with AWS. All kinds of companies rent, from small start-ups to big brands to even governments. Until something goes awry, it is considered faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
When AWS sneezes, the Internet gets to catch a cold.
The Domino Effect
So many companies depend on AWS for day-to-day operations: that is what made the outage so disruptive.
- Snapchat users were unable to send messages or open the application.
- Canva designers were staring at blank screens, error messages.
- Fortnite and Roblox gamers were kicked offline in the middle of their matches.
- There were delays in the booking system for Delta and United airlines.
- Disney+ and Hulu were down for streaming for a big part of their audience.
- McDonald’s and Pokémon apps, too, were intermittently unavailable.
- The web seemed to be taking a coffee break for several hours.
What Caused It
Put simply, AWS stated that the root cause was a Domain Name System (DNS) error — akin to the phone book of the internet. When you open an app, DNS tells it where to go to fetch data. Yesterday, that was malfunctioning in one of AWS’s busiest data regions in the US, resulting in widespread failures.
While most operations were restored quickly by the engineers, backlog processing is still in progress for some AWS services such as Lambda and CloudTrail. A few users in some regions may see intermittent errors or must clear their browser caches to reconnect fully.
Kong-Fu
One of the things that wasn’t down is Extreme! While you wait for your flight or to make your order you could always take a stroll through our games section. There you could find a game that perfectly fits your mood. One such game could just be Kong-Fu!
Game Overview
Let’s see what our sensei has in store for us:
- Volatility: Medium – balanced risk and reward.
- Ways to Win: Starts at 4,096 ways, can expand up to 46,656 ways during features!
- Jackpots: Yes, jackpots are up for grabs.
- Free Spins: Eligible through the Bonus Wheel.
- Win Direction: All symbols pay left to right only.
Symbols
- Scatter Symbol: “BONUS”
- 3 or more trigger the Bonus Wheel feature.
- Wild Symbol: “Gorilla Master”
- Substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter.
Master Takeover Feature
- Triggered randomly during base game.
- A random major symbol takes over the reels, replacing all other major symbols.
- The gameboard can expand to 6×5 or 6×6:
- 6×5 = 15,625 ways to win
- 6×6 = 46,656 ways to win
- Once it ends, the board returns to its original size.
Bursting Wilds Feature
- Can trigger at random in both Base Game and Free Games.
- Bursting Wilds act as Wilds and substitute for all symbols (except Scatters).
- They also count toward wins when they appear.
Bonus Wheel Feature
- Triggered when 3 or more BONUS (Scatter) symbols land anywhere.
- You get a spin on the Bonus Wheel, which can award:
- Free Games + Expanded Gameboard:
- 7 Free Games on a 6×6 grid
- 10 Free Games on a 6×5 grid
- 6 Free Games with Bursting Wilds on a 6×4 grid
- 8 Free Games on a 6×6 grid
- 15 Free Games on a 6×5 grid
- 7 Free Games with Bursting Wilds on a 6×4 grid
- 10x your total bet
- Jackpot
- Free Games + Expanded Gameboard:
Any Jackpot or cash prize you win is added to your total line wins.
- If the Bursting Wilds version of Free Games is active, that special feature can also trigger at random during spins.
What Happens at the End of Free Games?
- Your total winnings are displayed after all Free Games wrap up.
- If you re-trigger the Bonus Wheel during Free Games, you continue with your existing bonus — no new spin on the wheel.
So, there you have it folks. This is just one example of many unique and fun games that you can find and play at Extreme! Why not explore and test your chances today?
Why It Matters
This is not AWS’s first really bad day, but it is becoming bigger. So much of our digital infrastructure is now cloud-based that a single outage could send ripples around the globe in minutes.
It is reminiscent of other recent tech catastrophes, such as the CrowdStrike software glitch that grounded flights and cost billions for big companies in 2024. It serves to remind us how fragile the modern-day internet is when so many depend on a few dominant providers.
Back Online, But Never To Be Forgotten
By Monday night, most affected services were up and running again, and AWS declared the Monday incident fully resolved. Such incidents, though, are seen as wake-up calls among experts.
The more centralized the internet becomes, the greater the impact felt by all when one cog fails. This incident will force companies to reevaluate their cloud redundancy plans while making ordinary users aware for the first time of just how many of their favorite apps plug into that same invisible infrastructure.
So next time your app freezes or your favorite website is unresponsive, donít bet too much on it being your phone or Wi-Fi. It might just be half the internet taking a breather.
But for now, the web is back on its feet, and AWS hopes everything is running back to normal. Fingers crossed!