When Is Fortnite Coming Back Online?
Has a game ever deleted itself? It seems like Fortnite has come pretty darn close, with yesterday's "The End" event sucking the game's Battle Royale map and all players into a black hole. Fortnite has been nothing but an image of that black hole since, leaving players to wonder when the game might possibly be coming back online.
According to a famous Fortnite dataminer, we could see the game resume operations this Thursday, Oct. 17.
The https://t.co/0TDeMk7Bda code was updated so the the-end thing has its end_time as Thursday at 4am EST
i really doubt they really going to make people not play for 4 days or whatever straight but its epic lmao
take it as you will pic.twitter.com/P6gYB7lWHw
— Lucas7yoshi – FNBR Leaks/News (@Lucas7yoshi) October 14, 2019
The word from another dataminer, however, is that Chinese players are being told the game will be back on Tuesday. Who are we supposed to believe? We're really not sure.
Chapter 2 of Fortnite is confirmed to start on October 15 for chinese players. It's currently 9pm on October 14 in China. That means the Season could start at any second 3 hours from now. 👀
(via @Zer2o) pic.twitter.com/ALCOZXZrB6
— ShiinaBR – Fortnite Leaks (@ShiinaBR) October 14, 2019
Could Epic Games really keep Fortnite offline for several days? It's possible the move is actually a cover for real work that needs to be done behind the scenes, in which case, sure, perhaps Epic needs the downtime and thus saw an opportunity to drum up some hype. It's also possible the game could come back online more quickly (as the other leak states), and the date found within Fortnite's code is just a placeholder, designed more to throw off nosy dataminers than to actually point to a day and time of any significance.
Whatever the case, this is a Fortnite live event for the ages. We expected something big to happen with "The End," after leaks pointed to the game being called Fortnite: Chapter 2, and after we got a look at what could be a new map. We did not expect Fortnite to essentially erase itself, though. That is a pretty crazy move.
We'll have our eyes and ears trained on Epic Games (which has gone dark for the moment) and Fortnite itself for any news on when the game might come back. We'll be watching to see how the game comes back, too. How much will change in this new iteration of Fortnite? What other new bits can we expect from the game if we do indeed get a new map? As soon as we have more info, we'll let you know.