Fortnite season 11: What is Chapter 2, what has changed in patch note update and what was the black hole?
Fortnite, after being hit by an asteroid, has disappeared and been replaced by a huge black hole.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 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.
People crowd the display area for the survival game Fortnite at the 24th Electronic Expo, or E3 2018, in Los Angeles, California on on June 12, 2018 (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)
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.
(Although it should be noted that generally there are relatively few complaints about bugs and problems, especially given how fundamental the update is.)
There appears to be one specific part of the new map that just... kills you if you go into it. Others have reported dropping into the same area and dying, too.
The new version of Fortnite is still officially "early access", and you'll still see that glaring yellow label in the corner of the screen. That's despite the game being a couple of years old now, and into its second "chapter".
It's possible that Epic Games will never actually do a full release of Fortnite. Keeping it in this beta version makes it easier to push out new updates, and means that people are prepared to get them – which allows for major new updates like this.
Fortnite Chapter 2 has finally arrived. The game dropped after players spent nearly two days staring at a swirling black hole that had disappeared the map. Now Fortnite has returned – though with a new map and a whole variety of new features. What’s new in Chapter 2? First up, you get everything you'd expect in a normal update. That includes a whole new run of cosmetics, new
On Tfue's stream, players are speculating the new skins (of which there are many) are causing problems for performance. So if you get in and it feels laggy, it might be worth trying the default skin or similar to see if that improves the speed.
Fortnite is finally back online, after a nearly two day outage. Players can now play "Chapter 2", an entirely new update with a whole new map and a range of new features. It follows a bizarre "black hole" event, which saw players unable to get on the game for nearly two days. Instead, anyone logging in was forced to look at a black hole. More follows…
