Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world.
If you’re not one of the countless players of the online game Fortnite, this is for you. You may have noticed all kinds of Fortnite-related hashtags (#FortniteBlackout) trending on Twitter on Sunday and Monday morning. You may see memes and reactions from die-hards who are panicking about the end of the game (we’ll get to that!).
Does that describe you? We’re here to help you understand what happened as one season of the popular Epic Games title ended with a twist.
What exactly happened?
While Fortnite gamers were in the middle of playing on Sunday, the tenth season of the uber-popular game came to an end as rockets flew around a map, a giant meteor fell from the sky and a massive explosion created … a black hole, sucking anything and everything into it:
What’s the big deal with that?
No has been able to play Fortnite since then.
Uh-oh.
Sure, but maybe it’s a marketing ploy and everything will return to normal soon? The game’s Twitter feed (which deleted most of its tweets) has a live broadcast of the black hole and people are watching it to see what will happen next. That’s got to mean SOMETHING is going to happen.
What if it isn’t?
That’s why fans are nervous.
What are fans doing in the meantime?
Watching this livestream of a black hole.
Seriously?
Yep.
They’re also making memes:
They’ve also discovered a cool Easter Egg: by tapping in the classic Konami code (pressing up, up, down, down, left, left right, B, A, Start on a Nintendo controller. In this case start is “enter” on a keyboard), you can play a mini game to pass the time.
