Epic Games has released the season-ending event in "Fortnite Battle Royale" before completely disappearing! The video game developer has been missing ever since the event started and players haven't gotten any announcement regarding the downtime. After the event was over, players could only see the black hole on their screens with numbers popping out every once in a while and forming a sentence after decryption.
The game developer has deleted all tweets from the official Twitter account and the Trello board is also empty. All the other social media pages, including Facebook and Instagram, have entered the blackout phase and have the black profile image.
While Epic is trying its best to be mysterious and not reveal anything about the next season of "Fortnite Battle Royale," it seems that this Chinese version of the game has announced the start of Chapter 2.
Downtime will be over soon
Epic Games hasn't commented anything regarding the downtime which is currently in progress. However, Fortnite.com first showed that the end of the downtime would be on Tuesday, October 15, at 6 AM Eastern Time. A few hours later, the website code was changed to show October 17 at 4 AM Eastern Time, which would be Thursday. Considering that many new seasons have been released on Thursdays, this makes sense. However, the Chinese version of "Fortnite Battle Royale" has revealed that the downtime would indeed end on October 15.
Furthermore, data miners have analyzed the Chinese website of the game and found out that the release date of "Fortnite" Chapter 2 is October 14, 4:05 PM Eastern Time. Keep in mind that China is a different time zone and it would be October 15 in the country. Additionally, popular "Fortnite Battle Royale" streamer Ninja has given us a hint about the downtime.
He simply said "Tacos" in a Twitter video, which most likely refers to Taco Tuesday.
This would also be October 15 in Europe, except for the United Kingdom, Asia, Oceania, and many other regions.
The official announcement
It is important to note that this was an official announcement that could be seen on the launcher of the Chinese version of the game.
This was not a leak or a rumor, but data miners have simply found another proof by analyzing the website.
Fortnite China just announced that the new chapter starts on October 15! (Thanks to @Zer2o for the screenshot), we might actually get a downtime announcement tonight.. pic.twitter.com/8e2hC0e5Kv
— HYPEX - Fortnite Leaks & News 🎃 (@HYPEX) October 14, 2019
The popular video game has been down for over 20 hours as of the moment of this writing, which makes it the longest downtime in its history. The previous longest downtime happened in April 2018 when servers went down for an update during Season 3. "Fortnite Battle Royale" players were rewarded with free back bling for their waiting, so maybe Epic Games will have a free reward for players this time as well.