Fortnite season 11: What is Chapter 2, what has changed in patch note update and what was the black hole?
The black hole that replaced the game has some strange Easter eggs and a series of mystery numbers – but nothing that adds up to a clue
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Fortnite, after being hit by an asteroid, has disappeared and been replaced by a huge black hole.
The game is completely unplayable at the moment, with players unable to start a game and instead simply having to view that black hole as it swirls around.
The events mark the end of Fortnite's Season 10, and presumably the start of Season 11. But they are wrapped in mystery, amid feverish speculation about what will happen next.
Fortnite Season 11/Chapter 2 is now out. For everything you need to know, click here.
What happened?
Fortnite is destroyed – and in its place is just a big black hole.
Developers Epic Games had long teased an event called "The End", which would come on 13 October. It was supplemented by a big countdown clock in the game, which suggested that something big would happen when it reached zero.
And it did. Players that were inside the game saw a flurry of falling asteroids, which destroyed the game – they then fell into a black hole, which replaced the entire universe of the game.
Now, that's all players can see if they try and play. And it's all Epic will say about it, too, since it deleted its social channels and replaced them with a live stream of the black hole.
Can I play Fortnite now?
No. Anyone trying to will be greeted with the black hole.
There is, seemingly, no way around this – no trick to get back into Season 10 or play an older version of the game. Since the battle royale part of the game (and the story mode, too) rely on network features, Epic is able to change or destroy the game whenever it wants and there is no way for players to stop it happening.
Fortnite does include a minigame, however, if you wish to do something in the game. If you open up the black hole and do the Konami Code, a minigame will pop up – though it isn't anything like Fortnite.
There are of course a variety of other battle royale games in which you can get your fix – and some of them, like Apex Legends, are free. So those could be a good way to get your fix while you wait.
But ultimately there is no real way around the outage. Fortnite is down until Epic makes it come back.
Is Fortnite going to come back?
It is almost certainly going to come back. There are a variety of clues, but the ultimate evidence is outside the game: Epic makes vast amounts of money from Fortnite, and it would be very unusual for developers to throw it all away.
That means that after all of this will presumably come Season 11, or whatever Epic chooses to name the next installment of the game.
But we don't know when, how, or with what changes. It may come back in an entirely different form – perhaps, for instance, with a completely different map.
Are there any clues about what will happen next?
Epic has started to offer hints. But it's not clear what exactly they mean, or whether they mean anything at all.
The most meaningful one is the fact that, occasionally, numbers come out of the black hole.
Players found that the first of those numbers, when put into Google Maps, sent players to a huge gathering of crustaceans on a beach – that is, a crab rave, just like the meme. That suggests the numbers could be a largely meaningless joke meant to frustrate users.
New numbers have also started coming out: in addition to the crab numbers (11, 146, 15, and 62), the game is also spewing forth others (87, 14, 106, 2, and 150). The significance of those – whether they are more co-ordinates, or if all of the numbers will eventually form into one big clue – is still a mystery.
There's a lot of chat on social media about China – which has its own version of Fortnite. There, the countdown is rumoured to be ticking down to tonight, when players will get their own version of the event.
That has led some to hope that Fortnite will come back for the rest of the world when that happens, or at least that it will offer some clue about what's happening.
It might! But it also might not – the Chinese version of Fortnite is run separately, and so might just be on an entirely different and unrelated schedule.
(The China events happens in about 8 minutes – at 1pm UK time – so we might know more after that. But it might just be the same event, and mean that everyone is plunged into the mysterious black hole.)
The event is happening in China now, and appears to be the same as the one everywhere else.
The theory about the China event is that Epic wants to ensure that all players experience The End before they get the new update, so that everything happens at the same time. But that is just very much a theory, and there is no concrete indication that is actually going to happen.
It appears from local social media and streams that The End event has now concluded in China, and they have all been sucked into the void. So now we'll finally see if the theory about waiting for that to happen before everything else starts will be correct!
The China event is over, and now nothing has happened – beyond everyone in China also having to look, in puzzlement, at the black hole.
Those who argue for the China theory now suggest that people there need to see the numbers on the live stream, which took about seven hours.
This is getting to be a big theory: Donald Mustard, who works at Epic, has tweeted about the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is a key example of how long a black hole lasts.
(If this theory is true it would suggest that the game will be back about 7pm tonight. Maybe! But who knows really.)
The US and Canada are both celebrating national holidays today: Colombus Day in the US, and Thanksgiving in Canada.
That means that schools are off today, and many businesses are closed, so there will probably be plenty of people trying to play.
I suppose that makes Epic's decision to shut the game down even more surprising and brave. But it also means there's likely to be a lot more resentment.
It's been an hour and a half since China joined in The End, and started looking at the black hole too. And there has been absolutely nothing in terms of developments.
Nintendo has a support article for people "unable to play Fortnite due to Blackout". But it doesn't say very much that's very useful: only that yes, you definitely can't play, but also that your V-Bucks and inventory has not disappeared.
"The information in this article can help you when you're unable to play Fortnite during the Fortnite Blackout," the support page reads.
"Due to the Fortnite Blackout, all game modes are currently unavailable for play. Please be assured that your inventory items and V-Bucks are secure."
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