Fortnite went dark yesterday around 2:00pm est after an in game event started. Usually before a new season releases there is an in game event in which players get to witness some type of transformation in the map that adds context to the fortnite narrative and soon after the event is over you can hop in to play the new update.
This time around a huge black hole sucked in the entire map and players got to witness it happening in game. The black hole is still sitting in game not allowing players to play fortnite, all you can do is stare at a blackhole. As the time of this writing Fortnite has been live with this event for about 24 hours and many are speculating based on a tweet by pro gamer "Ninja" that the game should be up and running no later than tomorrow but nothing is confirmed. To make things more interesting the blackhole spits out clues every once in a while that many speculate to be coordinates or even text that might mean something. The truth is that everyone is going nuts on social media and asking themselves what this is all about.
Why is this a brilliant marketing strategy?
Well, the strategy its self is quite simple. Shut down the game and market the game on social media with speculation.
Fortnite is by far the biggest game in the world. People all over the world cant wait to get home every day after work or school to play it. Being a Fortnite player myself I can tell you the game is extremely addicting, there is fresh content every week which keeps the player base engaged and never bored, always expecting for something to happen.
If the rumors are true we should see fortnite up by tomorrow but with the history of fortnite and all the stunts they have pulled on their community anything can happen. Who knows if it will be tomorrow or within a month, one thing is certain, they have the entire world talking about this.
EVENT NARRATIVE in photos below
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I wouldn't call it brilliant, check out Reddit, they are furious.
I think it is brilliant its top trending topic on any social media. Marketing doesn't care about negative or positives especially when people are going to end up playing it anyway. The majority of the player base are teenagers that get furious anyway whether the game is doing something good or bad.