What happens next after Fortnite world is sucked into a blackhole

Epic Games ended the first run of its massively popular multi-player game Fortnite in spectacular fashion.

What is Fortnite?

Since its initial release in 2017, Fortnite has become one of the world's most popular video games.

The free-to-play game, which sees 100 players dropped onto a virtual island and using a variety of bizarre weapons, characters and items, to be last man standing.

It has attracted more than 100 million players worldwide and seen its in-game dance moves replicated by a number of athletes during major global events, including the 2018 Fifa World Cup.

The game held its own inaugural World Cup Finals earlier this year, where more than 100 players competed for a total prize pot of £24 million.

What happened?

Fortnite's entire map disappeared into a black hole last night, Sunday, October 14, leaving gamers unable to play, as part of a worldwide event to mark the end of the game's 10th season.

The popular battle royale game is known for its large, live showpiece events, and developer Epic Games had previously confirmed an event known as "The End" would take place on October 13.

Those who logged on to Fortnite on Sunday night saw the virtual island where the game takes place hit by a meteor shower before the entire map appeared to be sucked into a black hole – complete with the games’s menu screens.

Since then, anyone logging on to the game has been presented with a live stream of the black hole and no way of playing.

As part of a complete blackout, the official Fortnite Twitter account has also deleted all of its tweets apart from a live stream of the black hole. It has been retweeted more than 120,000 times.

Why?

The game - which sees up to 100 competitors battle to be the last player standing - is broken up into seasons which last several months, with the start of each new season marked by in-game events.

Previous large Fortnite events have included a meteor shower, a rocket launch, and a fight between a giant robot and a monster taking place across the map earlier this year.

And over the last few seasons, Epic has been dropping hints about an on-going story behind the scenes.That story came to a conclusion last night.

What happens next?

This latest showpiece coincides with the end of the game's 10th season .

Many fans are now expecting a large-scale refresh of the game and its island setting when itreturns for the 11th season.

That is likely to be fairly soon, but Epic is remaining tight-lipped about exactly what when the game will return or in what form.