Fortnite Blackout

Overview

Fortnite Blackout, also known as Fortnite Black Hole, refers to a massive Fortnite Battle Royale in-game event which started at the end of the Fortnite Season 10 on October 13th, 2019. The event involved the game map being destroyed by a massive black hole and the game made unavailable to the players for an unknown period of time.

Background

At approximately 2pm EST on October 13th, 2019, on the final day of game season 10 of Fortnite Battle Royale, a massive event, referred to as "The End," took place in the game.^[1] In all matches in progress at that time, a rocket was launched into the sky following a countdown, triggering space rifts above the map, with rockets and a meteor traveling between them, and a black hole opening on the map and destroying it (video of the event shown below). Those players who were in the Fortnite game at that time were shown an alternative version of the event.^[2] Following the event, the matchmaking was made unavailable to the players, with the game menu replaced with a video of a black hole and the game UI replaced with the single option to exit the game.

At the same time, the official Fortnite account deleted all previous posts and tweeted a live stream video of the in-game black hole, with the tweet receiving over 125,000 retweets and 320,000 likes in one day. (shown below).^[3] On Instagram, a collage of nine posts forming an image of a black hole in a middle of space was posted, with one of the images gaining over 5.6 million views and 1.8 million likes in one day.^[4] On Twitch, the official Fortnite channel launched a broadcast of the in-game black hole.^[5]

Notable Developments

Later on October 13th, 2019, Fortnite news Twitter account @FortniteBR reported that a minigame could be launched in the game via entering the Konami code (shown below).^[6]

Later on the same day, the account reported that the black hole was producing numbers at over periods of time, with the sequence revealed to be 11, 146, 15, 62, 87, 14, 106, 2, 150, 69, 146, 15, 36, 2, 176, 8, 160, 65. On the same day, the sequence was decoded by Twitter user @Thooming^[7] and other accounts^[8][9]
as "I was not alone. Others were outside the Loop. This was not calculated. The nothing is now inevitable." (tweets shown below).

On the same day, Twitter user @Lucas7yoshi discovered hints in the fortnite.com website code that "The End" might end on October 15th at 6am EST,^[10] with the code later changed to show 4am EST on October 17th instead (tweets shown below).^[11]

Later on October 13th, 2019, Mixer streamer Ninja tweeted that he will reveal a hint about Fortnite Chapter Two if his tweet receives over 250,000 likes.^[12] In one hour, Ninja posted a video of himself whispering "Tacos", stating that the hint should be taken seriously (shown below).^[13]

Tacos.

Online Reactions

On October 13th, 2019, American entrepreneur Elon Musk quoted his older tweet in which he posted a meme about him purchasing and deleting Fortnite,^[14] with the tweet receiving over 47,400 retweets and 236,400 likes in one day (shown below).

The event was followed with a surge of Fortnite related memes online on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and other platforms (examples shown below), with some players speculating about the expected duration of the blackout and others expressing joy that the game was made unavailable in the spirit of the Fortnite Bad memes.

Search Interest

External References