"Elon Musk buys Fortnite and deletes it" has become now classic internet hoax news headline that the tech entrepreneur defended. | Credit: Philip Pacheco/AFP
Fortnite players were treated to a singularly mysterious ending to Season 10 over the weekend. Players of the multiplayer online shooter game logged on Sunday to participate in The End event. At around 2 p.m. Eastern Time, a rocket exploded. The explosion collapsed into a black hole that pulled in the entire Battle Royale map and all the players.
Epic Games had been hyping up The End event for weeks, and the spectacle has so far lived up to the hype. Players had been expecting a new map after Season 10, and seeing the old one collapse into a black hole seems to confirm the rumors. But many hours of waiting later, the new map has yet to emerge.
Monday morning Fortnite still hasn’t updated with a new map. Players can’t start a match. They can’t build in creative mode. They can’t do anything at all. The entire Fortnite community is on Twitch together just staring at a black hole that’s been swirling on the screen for going on 24 hours now.
Fortnite even blacked out its Twitter account. It deleted some 12,000 tweets and left only a post of the lives tream of the black hole. Here’s the live stream of the black hole on Twitch’s YouTube:
This is a classic software business tactic, turning a bug into a feature. The creators of Fortnite needed some downtime to make the transition to a new map, and with a little animation and mystery, they have turned the interruption into a momentous and fun event.
But how long will the Fortnite blackout continue?
Some code data-mined from Fortnite’s website suggests the blackout will continue until Tuesday at 6 a.m. Then it was updated to suggest Thursday at 4 a.m. It could possibly be a red herring that Fortnite knew would fuel the speculation. The bookies for one online betting market are putting the odds on Thursday.
Twitter has been quick to point out that The Simpson’s predicted this:
And many have posted to congratulate Elon Musk on finally buying Fortnite and deleting it “to save these kids from eternal virginity.” Musk himself tweeted out the hoax news headline in October 2018 with a note, “Had to been done ur welcome.” That was following a spat between SpaceX and Fortnite fans on Twitter.
It’s been a charming back and forth between the SpaceX CEO and the creators of Fortnite. Interesting that it was a rocket that ended up deleting the Season 10 Fortnite map. Could this really be the end?
This article was edited by Gerelyn Terzo.