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
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Fortnite, after being hit by an asteroid, has disappeared and been replaced by a huge black hole.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.
(This helps deepen the mystery of why exactly Epic has undertaken such a huge outage. If it is to give developers time to update the game and everything is ready, then presumably the leak makes little difference and the update could arrive any time. But if it is just to get people going, then perhaps it will choose to push out the update earlier.)
Just 15 minutes until the rumoured release at 2pm eastern time. (That would mean the outage was 24 hours long, and be in keeping with some other clues, but is very, very, very far from confirmed!)
If you want to watch along – and probably be disappointed – when whatever is going to happen in five minutes happens or doesn't happen, here's where you can do that:
It's 7pm and nothing is happening. The black hole is still black, still a hole.
Ninja is, according to his Instagram story, watching NFL today. That might suggest that he's been tipped off that he can take the day off... (It could also mean that his "taco" post earlier could be a reference to taco Tuesdays.)
Still nothing happening on the stream. Black hole is very black and very holey.
On social networks like Twitter and Reddit, there seems to have been a change in tone: where people were once hopeful, excited and intrigued, there's a note of weary resignation creeping in. One day feels like a good amount of time to get people interested; more than a day feels like enough time that people will get tired out.
But perhaps all of that will be undone when the update comes out.
Occasionally, the black hole seems to grow or change shape. But it seems to just be on repeat, or at least be meaningless – eventually, it will shrink back down again, and nothing new will happen.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments