Fortnite’s new map is the star of its revamped, reinvigorated Chapter two update, which launched yesterday right after practically 48 hours of black hole-ridden downtime.
But yesterday was not the initially time fans had been in a position to peer at the new map. It had, in reality, been floating about several corners of the world wide web for a number of weeks.
The dilemma was, no one particular believed it.
Back in September, an image displaying most of the map was posted to the r/fortnitecompetitive reddit. The post – which has because been deleted – claimed it was a leak from a “pal” who was an Epic employee.
It integrated the similar leaked location names as these discovered inside Fortnite’s personal update files, apparently for a set of new regions due to debut in season 11. It also integrated a Battle Bus route and place marker, as if snipped from an in-game screenshot illicitly taken on a top rated-secret test server.
Was it actual? The world wide web rapidly decided no. Fan-created map ideas are posted on reddit all the time, and the notion Fortnite was abruptly going to switch to an all-new island was nonetheless far from specific. Regardless of getting reposted a couple a lot more instances (like to the primary r/FortniteBR by user FaZeNiccorazi, who supplied a very good summary of its repost history right here), the image failed to acquire a lot traction. Each and every time it was posted, it was downvoted into oblivion.
Anything changed on 4th October, when nicely-identified Fortnite leaker Hypex posted the map to Twitter. The finish of season X was now swiftly approaching and a lot more hints had been dropped that Fortnite would certainly blow up its old map for very good. Hypex claimed an anonymous supply on 4chan had “possibly” told him the leak was actual.
Verifiable or not, Hypex’s post rapidly blew up – spread to his half a million Twitter followers and a lot more than a million YouTube subscribers.
But as quickly as the post started to acquire traction, a person on Twitter came forward to say that the map was a fake right after all. In now-deleted tweets, they mentioned they had been behind the original post on reddit – and had created the map themselves in Photoshop.
Now, of course, it is clear the leak was actual. Comparing the two side-by-side shows them as practically identical. So why had a person come forward to say they created it all up?
Eurogamer spoke with the individual behind it all earlier this week, who we will not name due to their age. They did not want to elaborate additional on how they obtained the leaked map. Their claim the map was fan-created came right after Epic had got in touch to say it had noticed the leak, they mentioned.
Writing on Twitter final evening, the individual publicly apologised for all the confusion. We’ve separately asked Epic for comment.
With the new map released, the leaked version is nonetheless an fascinating artefact – a appear at Epic’s operate-in-progress create. We can see the in-improvement names for map areas which have because been replaced. And we can see regions which have clearly changed versus the release version (for instance, the snow-capped mountains observed in the bottom suitable corner).
And it is entertaining to know that, a lot more than a month ahead of all the black hole speculation, the truth was currently out there.