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.

[14 October 2019 09:51 · Andrew Griffin]

If you're just catching up on the night's developments, here's our news story on the disappearance of Fortnite.

[14 October 2019 09:51 · Andrew Griffin]

Here's everything that's happened, explained – including whether or not the game will come back, and what you can do in there now.

[14 October 2019 10:01 · Andrew Griffin]

Why are people joking that Elon Musk is to blame for the disappearance of Fortnite?

It all comes down to this tweet, in which the Tesla boss shared a satirical article suggesting that he'd bought the game to remove it. (And mocked the people who play it.) People are now joking that has actually happened.

Overnight, Musk re-posted that tweet with a simple "haha".

Here's our story from October, when he first shared the tweet.

[14 October 2019 10:06 · Andrew Griffin]

After Fortnite disappeared, Epic did have an actual outage, which left players unable to get into other games bought through its store, too.

The company's Twitter account makes clear that was a real outage, rather than something to do with the ongoing Fortnite palaver:

But it is now fixed:

[14 October 2019 10:26 · Andrew Griffin]

The Fortnite subreddit – which is currently in lockdown because of the event, with the exception of one thread – is currently very angry indeed.

There are many measured reactions, with people pleading with Epic to ensure that whatever update comes after this is worth all the downtime.

But many are much more frustrated – largely with not knowing what is going on, when the game will return, or anything else, despite the fact that many people have spent vast amounts of money on the game.

They're also sharing plenty of jokes and memes, such as:

(You can find those here, which is a special subreddit opened to discuss the new updates, away from the locks on all the main Fortnite forums.)

[14 October 2019 10:43 · Andrew Griffin]

Here's a round-up of what's happened so far (via the Press Association):

Fortnite's entire map has disappeared into a black hole, leaving gamers unable to play, as part of a worldwide event to mark the end of the game's 10th season.

The popular battle royale game is known for its large, live showpiece events, and developer Epic Games had previously confirmed that an event known as "The End" would take place on October 13.

Those who logged on to Fortnite on Sunday night saw the virtual island where the game takes place hit by a meteor shower before the entire map appeared to be sucked into a black hole.

Since then, anyone logging on to the game has been presented with a live stream of the black hole and no way of playing.

As part of a complete blackout, the official Fortnite Twitter account has also deleted all of its tweets apart from a live stream of the black hole. It has been retweeted more than 120,000 times.

The game - which sees up to 100 competitors battle to be the last player standing - is broken up into seasons which last several months, with the start of each new season marked by in-game events.

This latest showpiece coincides with the end of the game's 10th season - with many now expecting a large-scale refresh of the game and its island setting before it returns for the 11th season, likely to begin in the coming days.

Previous large Fortnite events have included a meteor shower, a rocket launch, and a fight between a giant robot and a monster taking place across the map earlier this year.

Since its initial release in 2017, Fortnite has become one of the world's most popular video games.

the free-to-play game has attracted more than 100 million players and seen its in-game dance moves replicated by a number of athletes during major global events, including the 2018 Fifa World Cup.

The game held its own inaugural World Cup Finals earlier this year, where more than 100 players competed for a total prize pot of £24 million.

[14 October 2019 10:47 · Andrew Griffin]

A popular sentiment is that people didn't realise quite how into Fortnite they were, until it disappeared. I suppose it's true what they say, you never really miss something until it's gone.

"I didn’t think I was addicted to Fortnite but my behaviour over the last three hours says otherwise," wrote one Reddit user.

[14 October 2019 10:59 · Andrew Griffin]

There is speculation that the strange numbers coming out of the black hole might have been decoded (or at least one version of them has been).

For some time, the game has been teasing recordings from The Visitor, a mysterious person whose tapes could be found throughout the map. Players speculated that these were clues to the next season.

Now, players have matched those numbers with specific words in the recordings. By taking the numbers, and looking for that word within the sequence, a sentence seems to appear:

"I WAS NOT ALONE," it reads. "OTHERS ARE OUTSIDE THE LOOP THIS WAS NOT CALCULATED. THE ZERO POINT IS NOW INEVITABLE."

Obviously this is pure speculation, but it does seem to at least line up into something that makes grammatical sense! Expect all to be revealed later...

[14 October 2019 11:05 · Andrew Griffin]

Here's how the end looked, if you haven't caught it yet. It was very spectacular!

[14 October 2019 12:07 · Andrew Griffin]

Overnight, Ninja asked for 250k likes on this tweet and promised he'd give a hint in return.

The likes arrived: at the time of publication, the tweet had 318k likes.

And so the hint arrived, too. He promised it was real but, well – decide for yourself. (Play it with headphones, but don't turn them up too loud!)