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'Fortnite' Black Hole: Servers Are Still Shut Down, But It Seems Like It Might Come Back Soon

This article is more than 4 years old.

credit: Epic Games

Update: We're back!

This has been, without exception, the most exciting instance of server maintenance in video gaming history.  For more than a day now, servers for the popular battle royale game Fortnite has been effectively shut down: you can load into the game but you can't do anything but watch a black hole slowly swirl on screen, or play a little Space Invaders clone if you input the Konami code. At the time of this writing, the game has been down for an impressive 29 hours, and it doesn't look like it's going to come back up tonight.

Right now it's sort of anyone's guess when the game will come back, but there's reason to believe it's going to come up soon. There appears to be an advertisement in China that says the new Season will start on October 15, which would leave some time tomorrow morning for the thing to start up: October 15 will end at 12:00 PM Eastern in the United States. The battle pass trailer has also already leaked out, something that doesn't typically happen until pretty close to release.

Again, it's all circumstantial, and Epic is expected to continue its total silence until the season starts up. There's also common sense at play here: a full day should be enough time for any server-side work Epic needs to do, even something so big as what it seems like we're working with here. Given that, the company probably doesn't want to let this drag on too much longer, risking the current wave of hype devolving further into frustration. Plenty of people are grumbling on social media already, but that would be a whole lot worse if we move on to a full 48 hours.

We have an idea of what we'll be getting when the game comes back, and it seems like a pretty extensive overhaul. There's a new map and new models for things like basic weapons, chests and ammo boxes, as well as boats, the ability to swim, more complicated support mechanics and what looks to be an overhauled progression system. There are also rumors that Fortnite: Save the World will be going free-to-play, but those are unconfirmed.

So stick around: my current guess is tomorrow morning, but I'm just doing my best to follow along with everyone else. Epic has kept us guessing, and it's been an impressive feat. It feels like it's time to move on with things, though.