On Monday, October 20, 2025, many people found their favourite apps, games, and websites simply not working. Services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported major problems, which quickly cascaded to platforms such as Snapchat and Roblox. This cloud-provider breakdown hit a wide range of users, creating a noticeable ripple effect across the internet.What makes this moment even more significant is the scale and variety of the services affected. From messaging apps to gaming platforms, from cloud computing to home-device support, the impact was broad and visible. For example, the outage began around midnight Pacific Time (12:00 a.m. PT) when user reports surged.Why is Amazon Web Services (AWS) down?AWS is one of the largest cloud infrastructure providers in the world. Many companies rely on it for critical components like computing power (EC2), storage, databases (DynamoDB), and content delivery. If AWS services suffer problems, it can quickly hamper many downstream services.AWS confirms outage on October 20, 2025. (Image via Amazon)In this case, AWS reported “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 (Northern Virginia) Region.” That means the region had an internal fault: something was going wrong with AWS’s infrastructure in a major data-centre area. The exact technical root cause is still under investigation, but the symptoms were clear that the cloud services on which the other companies depend started failing or slowing down.Because AWS underpins so many web services, this kind of failure has an outsized impact. A regional service disruption can propagate through many layers: if your app relies on AWS’s database or content delivery network and that fails, then your app fails too. The interconnected nature of modern web infrastructure means that when one major node falters, the effects radiate quickly.How AWS outage affecting other services?When AWS’s infrastructure degraded around midnight PT, a large number of consumer-facing apps began reporting failures. Even Downdetector (a site tracking outages) noted sudden spikes in reports for services across multiple sectors, from gaming to productivity to streaming.Among the games that were affected are Roblox, Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Fortnite, and Rainbow Six Siege. Even streaming platforms like Crunchyroll and Prime Video have also faced issues. Snapchat is also victim to Amazon Web Services outage, as many faced login issues.AWS is currently working to restore full service and identify the root cause. This incident serves as a reminder of how fragile and interconnected modern web infrastructure really is.