Fortnite shutdown: What’s going on? Will black hole mark the game's end?

REUTERS/Files

Fortnite, which was hit by meteors and rockets Sunday evening, has reportedly shut down and is now displaying a black hole.

Hosting more than 250 million players worldwide, the game's shutdown left the players in shock especially after its social media accounts were wiped clean in an apparent blackout after the event.

The creator of the online shooter game, Epic Games, had been teasing "The End" — an in-game event to end the 10th season of the game — but fans had not expected its to come true literally, as gamers were wondering what was going on ahead of an expected launch of Fortnite's next season.

Fotnite's third version was a huge success for Epic Games, pulling over 100 million players in under a year of its initial September 2017 release. It also bagged revenues worth move than $2.4 billion last year.

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Fortnite Battle Royale, the third version of the game, is a free-to-play shooter-survival battle game, in which players from anywhere in the world can join and fight each other to be the last person standing.

One of the most widely played video games, 100,000 of its loyal fans were still actively watching the game's black hole live-stream onTwitch, with another 50,000 YouTube.

Speaking to CNN, Rod Breslau — an esports and gaming consultant — termed the game's developers,Epic Games, as "geniuses" and noted that millions of gamers in total had tuned in.

Breslau called Sunday's black hole explosion and outage "the most watched gaming event in history".

After the Fortnite blackout, some users voiced concern about how they could no longer log in to play any other games from Epic Games either. The company confirmed on Twitter that its game launcher was down but said shortly afterwards that it had returned to normal.

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Will Fortnite come back online?

The move by Fortnite, which generates a revenue of over $2 billion for “Epic games”, would be unusual if the developers really intend to throw it all away. While the game has started to offer hints, it's unclear as to what they directed to.

At times,players have found numbers come out of the black hole, which, when put into Google Maps, sent them to a huge gathering of crustaceans on a beach — a crab rave.

Fortnite gamers really do remain in the dark as there has been no official statement from the developers regarding the apparent shutdown.

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