Top livestreaming platform Twitch has crashed on Sunday, October 13, almost exactly as millions of viewers attempted to watch the Season 10 ending Fortnite event.
With the event scheduled for 11AM PT / 2PM EST / 7PM BST, over one million fans tuned in to their favorite channels to watch the action.
Or at least, they tried. Minutes after the scheduled event, Twitch began failing to show any stream content, with users met with a black screen instead.
One saving grace was that chat itself still seemed operational for most users, so the viewers were at least able to keep themselves entertained.
While some lucky users were still able to see the action, mainly if they had already been on prior to the crash, millions were unable to see a thing.
Top Fortnite streamer Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney had amassed over 300,000 viewers at the point of the event, although it’s unclear how many of them could actually see anything but a black screen with no audio.
Twitch is now down
Fortnite just broke Twitch https://t.co/QNKCDNUw7N
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 13, 2019
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Although streams resumed soon after for many, clips and VOD’s remained invisible for a short time after.
Oddly, it tied in nicely with the ‘blackout’ of Fortnite itself, who used a blackhole on social media to symbolize ‘The End’ of the game as we know it.
Reports also suggest that rival site Mixer also crashed, which is of course home to top Fortnite streamer Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins.
At its peak, the event hit over 6 million concurrent viewers across Twitch and YouTube – with the latter not suffering any major technical issues.
The event left players scratching their heads though, as they were presented with nothing but a black hole in the game, and no world from developers Epic Games about what to expect next.