Fortnite map wiped out by black hole to mark end of Season 10

It is not clear when or even if the game will return

Related video: Fortnite season 10 official trailer (Fortnite)

Fortnite has been destroyed by a huge asteroid, and replaced with a black hole.

The in-game event wiped out the entire map and means that its millions of players are now unable to get into the game at all.

Instead, they have been encouraged to watch a mysterious live stream of a black hole.

The asteroid collision marked the end of Season 10. Developers Epic Games tend to mark the close of the game’s “seasons” with major events that can be watched within the game.

But it has led to a variety of questions about Season 11. Usually, such updates bring tweaks to the map or other alterations to the game – rather than wiping out the entire world and leaving it impossible to play.

It is not clear when or even if the game will return. (It is almost certain that it will, however, since Epic has made billions of dollars through the game.)

In the meantime, players have been encouraged to tune in to a wildly popular live stream which just shows the black hole. At some point, that will presumably reveal what is going to happen in Season 11.

Fortnite deleted everything else from its Twitter account and gave no more information about what had happened to the game.

Fans had expected Season 10 to come to a dramatic close, since Epic teased that there would be a major “The End” event over the weekend. It was also marked by a countdown timer which appeared within the game.

Players who were in the world when that timer reached its end saw a huge meteor shower fall on the map and seemingly destroy all of it. Those players then fell out of the world and the screen was replaced with the black hole – which continues to be all that is left of the game.

[15 October 2019 09:00 · Andrew Griffin]

(Nothing is happening so far.)

[15 October 2019 09:01 · Andrew Griffin]

THE SERVERS HAVE GONE OFFLINE.

[15 October 2019 09:02 · Andrew Griffin]

Now all of Fortnite has truly disappeared; you can't even get online at all. This is presumably the real downtime.

[15 October 2019 09:03 · Andrew Griffin]

The game will now be fully offline for the next couple of hours, presumably as the update is pushed out. (Surprising they weren't able to do that while the black hole showed...)

[15 October 2019 09:04 · Andrew Griffin]

Fortnite's stream on Twitter is still showing the black hole.

But the account's tweets (which had been completely deleted) are back.

[15 October 2019 09:06 · Andrew Griffin]

Usually, Fortnite's website will show the patch notes for the new update before they go live. But the website is still the black hole, for now.

[15 October 2019 09:12 · Andrew Griffin]

The full cinematic trailer for Chapter 2 has been leaked. (I can't link it in here because it is being removed from the internet.)

[15 October 2019 09:14 · Andrew Griffin]

There's still no clue about how long this downtime will last. They're usually a couple of hours, but this one might be shorter: people are already getting their downloads, and surely Epic has been able to do some of the work while the black hole was happening?

[15 October 2019 09:15 · Andrew Griffin]

Here's the full write-up of the end of the black hole.

[15 October 2019 09:18 · Andrew Griffin]

At nearly 20GB – depending what platform you're on – this could be Fortnite's biggest update ever.