Everything You Need To Know About the 'Fortnite' Black Hole

Epic Games' wildly successful 'Fortnite' game ended Season 10 by throwing everything into a black hole. Here's what you need to know about this wild ending.

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Image via Epic Games

Fortnite

On Sunday, October 13, 2019, at 2 p.m. EST, you may have felt a great disturbance online, as if millions of voices (around 250 million, actually) cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Fortnite, the world's most popular battle royale multiplayer, concluded its tenth season with a game-changing event: the apparent deletion and destruction of everything. Epic Games has created in-game events before, but never on this scale. The map, the menus, the characters: it's all gone, obliterated in a cataclysmic in-game disaster. 

What's left in its place is a black screen with a black hole. As of this afternoon, Monday, October 14, if you try logging in to Fortnite, you'll just see the black hole. The Twitter account has a live stream of the black hole. The Instagram account uploaded a 5-minute video of the black hole. And ironically, the lack of anything means that everyone is talking about it. Never has not playing a game been so exciting.

Here is everything you need to know about the Fortnite black hole, especially if you've got friends who have been currently staring at a black screen for the past several hours.

What is Fortnite?

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Fortnite is the name of a video game franchise featuring third-person shooting and online multiplayer. Development company Epic Games, also famous for its Unreal Tournament and Gears of War franchises, devised three different game modes: one is Fortnite: Save The World, the most traditional game with a zombie apocalypse narrative, and another is Fortnite: Creator, which allows players to design their own maps.

But the Fortnite: Battle Royale mode has turned this game into a global phenomenon. One hundred players skydive onto the map, where they fortify themselves, arm themselves, and fight to the death until only one of them is left. This is available as a free-to-play experience, with microtransactions for cosmetic customization.

The battle takes place on a massive island, which is further divided into different zones. There's an area covered with ice, an area that's a desert, and another area that's a jungle. Think Disney's Zootopia, but with more guns and less bunnies.

That sounds fun.

It is fun. Approximately 250 million people play the game worldwide. And it's reached such a cultural saturation point that people are filing complaints and lawsuits over the game's addictive qualities. In fact, a Montreal law firm is currently preparing a class-action suit on behalf of two parents against the company, claiming that it knowingly made the game as addictive as possible to children by hiring psychologists to aid in its development.

Regardless, it sounds like those parents need to do a better job of establishing boundaries.

I agree.

What did players know about this "black hole" event?

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Did Epic Games respond afterwards?

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Epic Games' social media accounts posted solid black images in the aftermath; the Twitter account currently links to a livestream of the black hole. They also tweeted out, "this is the end," although this has since been deleted. There's been nothing since then.

To be fair, a non-response is its own form of response.

Can you do anything with the black hole, aside from staring at it?

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If you enter in the Konami code (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start), you can play a mini-game while you wait for whatever happens next. It's a Space Invaders-esque shooter, where you play as a slice of pizza against a fleet of Durr Burger heads.

What have I been hearing about secret numbers?

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People who have been watching the black hole non-stop have noticed numbers that materialize and then disappear. In order, the numbers so far have been:

11 146 15 62 

87 14 106 2 150 

69 146 15 36 

2 176 8 160 65

When players tried entering the first set of numbers as coordinates into Google Maps, they were directed to an image that referenced the crab rave meme. Clearly, Epic Games figured that players might try this first.

Do we have a possible solution to this puzzle?

As of Monday morning, players have likely solved the puzzle. By matching up the numbers with the words on the Visitor's audio cassette tapes, we get the following message:

I was not alone. 

Others were outside the loop. 

This was not calculated. 

The nothing is now inevitable.

That's too perfect to be a coincidence. It's cool, to be sure. But it still doesn't tell us much about what's to come.

Are the V-Bucks safe?

Both Nintendo and Sony have confirmed that in-game purchases and in-game money are safe. Even black holes have their limits.

When can we expect the game to go back online?

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