On Sunday afternoon, as gamers participated in Fortnite’s season-ending event, the entire game went quiet.
Around 2 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, an alarm began to sound within the game. Rockets began shooting around the island where the game takes place, slowly destroying it, according to livestreams of the event. A meteor that had been hanging above eventually crashed down and, as players were flown into the sky, the entire island exploded before everything was sucked into a black hole.
Season 10 of the game was scheduled to end Oct. 13 after Epic Games, the game’s developer extended it for an extra week, according to Fox. But players were faced with a big surprise at the end of the season 10 event, finding the game was no longer playable.
When attempting to enter back into the game, players are met with a dark screen with the black hole at the center. The same image is present on the game’s social media.
According to The New York Times, the official Fortnite Twitter account was wiped clean of more than 12,000 tweets. All that remains is a single tweet with a link to a livestream of the black hole.
Prior to the event, the game’s twitter account had tweeted an image accompanied by the words “This is The End.”
CNN reported that, even four hours after the game had gone quiet, approximately 50,000 people were still watching the livestream of the black hole on YouTube, with another 100,000 watching on Twitch.
The blackout caused some Twitter users to wonder if Epic Games was really bringing Fortnite to an end. Is it really over? But most think it’s a way for the company to reignite interest for the game’s 11th season — especially considering the plateau in user interest in the game over the past few months.
“Fortnite Season 10 is coming to an end, and all of this is hype for season 11,” Rod Breslau, an esports and gaming consultant, told CNN. “Instead of just the standard update approach that Epic does for Fortnite ... which is going down for a few hours to apply an update, Epic has created an entire marketing and social media campaign, along with a narrative story around it.”
A statement released on Twitter by PlayStation assured players that their progress in the game — including digital money and “inventory” they may have accumulated — would not be affected by the blackout.
Season 11 of the game is expected to begin on Oct. 17. Most “Fortnite” seasons begin on Thursdays.