Hey, Fortnite fanatics: Odds are you are going to bed this Sunday night feeling confused, angry and needing answers.
And there's a totally valid reason for it.
Season 10 of Fortnite has ended -- literally.
The End event should have eventually introduced Season 11, but when players logged on this afternoon to experience it, something strange happened ... and right now, no one can actually play the game.
What went down
When players logged on around 2 p.m. EST, they could access only a single mode, or a teamfight called "The End." During the mode, a rocket around Dusty Depot launched into the sky, and like other end-of-season events, created rifts in the sky.
But then, multiple rockets started creating multiple rifts before morphing into one giant rift over the island. Any players in the mode were then thrown into the air, where they watched, suspended, as one giant meteor and six rockets come out of the newly formed giant rift.
Then, the six rockets fell down -- and shot out around the island in different directions -- and the large meteor crashed into Loot Lake. Next came an explosion, and everything was sucked into the rift, leaving behind only a black hole.
RIP Fortnite: Battle Royale
— Jack "CouRage" Dunlop (@CouRageJD) October 13, 2019
FULL LIVE REACTION TO THE END! pic.twitter.com/ifX4CJcnEK
Now, the game is unplayable -- anyone logging into the game will see only the black hole. (However, players can enter the Konami Code -- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter key -- to play a minigame while they wait.)
Fortnite's Twitter: Black hole. Instagram: Black hole. Official website: Black hole.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) October 13, 2019
Now what?
Fortnite is known for revamping with a new theme every few months, so this may be a way to get users' attention.
Players have noticed numbers around the black hole, too. Some users have speculated that one of the combination of numbers could be a date and time at which Season 11 will be playable. However, the combination of numbers has changed throughout the afternoon and into the night.
Epic Games, which developed and released Fortnite in 2017, has commented publicly so far only about an outage that prevented users from logging in.
Login services have returned to normal. We appreciate your patience.
— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) October 13, 2019
At one point, there were millions of total users just watching the black hole across Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Gaming and Mixer.
There are millions upon millions of people watching this @FortniteGame stream right now.
— 𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗔 🎃𝗖𝗔𝗟 (@Arda) October 13, 2019
If I'm Fortnite I leave it there for the whole day.
What a boss flex: "we made you watch a black hole for 24 hours" https://t.co/eQsXLK8tDS
People have a lot to say
March 2019 was the last time Epic Games released a statistic about the number of registered accounts: 250 million players.
And those users -- including some of the game's most popular players -- are all in on the black hole drama.
I mean to be honest after all the non stop complaining and trash talking every day on fortnite... what did we expect to happen? 😞🤔
— Ninja (@Ninja) October 13, 2019
Everyone trying to figure out what the Fortnite numbers mean pic.twitter.com/8phQgUeuPQ
— timthetatman (@timthetatman) October 13, 2019
— J O E J O N A S (@joejonas) October 13, 2019
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson even offered an explanation of what would happen if you were caught in the middle of Fortnite's black hole.
Did your @fortnitegame suck you & everything else into a black hole?
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 13, 2019
Can't help you there.
But death-by-black-hole is a thing, and there might even be an entire universe on the other side.https://t.co/Toio6gpgdv
Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf recently won the first Fortnite World Cup, and he had a bold prediction for when the next season will drop.
THE GAME WILL BE OUT BEFORE 8PM FORTNITE HAS NEVER MISSED THE SHOP
— SEN Bugha (@bugha) October 13, 2019