Josh, my Twitter is flooded with people mourning the loss of Fortnite and blaming Elon Musk and I really have no idea what is happening. What is happening?

I’m glad you asked, Steph. So: Fortnite is a massive online multiplayer game played by 250 million people around the world. It’s huge.

A few hours ago a big asteroid in the game began to flare up and within a short time basically blew up the entire map.

You can’t play the game right now. It’s just a black hole. People, naturally, began freaking out.

RIP Fortnite: Battle Royale



FULL LIVE REACTION TO THE END! pic.twitter.com/ifX4CJcnEK — Jack “CouRage” Dunlop (@CouRageJD) October 13, 2019

Fortnite also deleted all of its tweets and is running a livestream of said black hole both on Twitter and game-streaming platform Twitch, which around 40,000-60,000 people are currently watching. According to some reports, the total number of viewers across all platforms is more than six million.

"No one is stupid enough to watch a blackhole for 4 hours" #Fortnite Me: pic.twitter.com/NwtgWTCs33 — 1800 Clapz (@1Clapz) October 13, 2019

Some numbers have been appearing around the black hole, and people are wondering whether they’re clues.

This is no joke - @FortniteGame are FULLY trolling us all.



If you type the numbers "11 146 15 62 google maps" in Google and click the first link, you get a street view of a crab rave.



LMAO🦀🦀🦀 pic.twitter.com/a1ADbXdxoH — Jon (@MrDalekJD) October 13, 2019

Everyone trying to figure out what the Fortnite numbers mean pic.twitter.com/8phQgUeuPQ — timthetatman (@timthetatman) October 13, 2019

Millions of people are watching a black hole? Who are these people? How does this game work?

Fortnite is an online shooter game where around 100 people are pitted against each other on a small island in a fight to the death until one person is left standing. A lot of time and in some cases money has been invested, particularly by the most hardcore players – so people are wondering if this is the end of Fortnite, or just the start of a new season of the game (a season lasts around 10 weeks).

It’s so popular, particularly with kids, because it’s free, easy to use and doesn’t really take itself seriously with blood and gore and lots of things that you often get in other huge online games. Also, it’s kind of addictive.

On behalf of parents everywhere, Thank You Fortnite, for making yourself completely unplayable for an entire day. — Josh (@krockjosh) October 14, 2019

Epic Games reportedly makes up to about US$300m per month from it. That’s largely from players spending money in the game, on outfits and various items for their characters; as well as from the battle pass system, where people pay at least US$10 (or 950 v-bucks, in the in-game currency) for challenges that allow them to unlock extra content.

In terms of how much people invest in the game, it’s less of an issue than loot boxes (where people pay real money for mystery in-game prizes) – but a law firm in Canada recently launched a lawsuit against Epic Games, claiming Fortnite operated in a similar way to slot machines, and was as addictive as cocaine.

In July, people competed for US $30m in prize money at the Fortnite world cup – and you’ve probably seen some of the memes for Fortnite without even realising. Do you remember Ted Danson flossing? Yeah that’s Fortnite.

Did your @fortnitegame suck you & everything else into a black hole?



Can’t help you there.



But death-by-black-hole is a thing, and there might even be an entire universe on the other side.https://t.co/Toio6gpgdv — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 13, 2019

OK. So it’s big. How exactly is Elon Musk involved?

Where Elon Musk fits in is that almost one year ago exactly, he tweeted out a fake news article suggesting he had bought Fortnite just to delete it to “save these kids from eternal virginity”.

Had to been done ur welcome pic.twitter.com/7jT0f9lqIS — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2018

That tweet has now got about 300,000 RTs, because some people were assuming the fake news became real. Musk, jokingly, even RTed it himself.

But while some fans are freaking out that it could be the end (not helped by Epic Games, who earlier Tweeted – and since deleted – about the end coming), it looks like it’s just the end of this current phase of the game. PlayStation has reassured players that they don’t have to worry about their items being lost.

Wait, so this is just hype for the next release?

I’d say so, yes. It’s likely the new, 11th season will commence soon with changes to the map, and shiny new things.

We have seen Fortnite do this sort of thing before, At the end of season seven, big cracks began forming in the ground of the island as a result of earthquakes. Eventually this formed a big volcano – when season eight started.

Those keen to know what happens next will have to stay tuned. If you get bored waiting, you can enter the Konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start) and play a Galaga-esque mini game in the meantime. Otherwise, just keep watching the hole.