Mysterious skull logo has ‘Fortnite’ players bracing for missile launch

Epic Games has routinely added meta-narrative and Easter eggs to Fortnite: Battle Royale since its launch last year, and the game’s map was significantly altered recently after a meteor crashed and destroyed the Dusty Depot area. The next big change appears to be on the way, as a series of mysterious in-game logos point to something a little more explosive crashing down.

Teases initially began on the Nintendo Switch version of Fortnite, which was released last week during E3 2018. A countdown clock ending on Tuesday, June 19, appeared on television sets in the game, and the other console and PC versions soon featured similarly colored red skulls on their television sets.

Data-mining players have discovered the meaning behind the countdown ahead of Epic’s official reveal: A launchable rocket. According to the uncovered files, the rocket — located in the Snobby Shores lair — will be usable by players, suggesting it might not be a permanent change to the environment like the meteor.

If the rocket is a reusable special item, it could still change the game in a dramatic way, similar to the special Thanos event Epic Games produced for Avengers: Infinity War. During E3 2018, the studio revealed to Geoff Keighley that the Thanos event had been conceived and designed in a matter of weeks, and this ridiculous pace for content updates has given players reasons to keep coming back to Fortnite day after day.

Not all is well with Fortnite, however. Nintendo Switch players who had previously tried the game on PlayStation 4 have been met with notices telling them that their Epic Games account is incompatible and they must make a new one. This is due to Sony’s hard stance against cross-console play, which has already stopped Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users from interacting with each other, but attempting to limit accounts to this degree comes across as needless micromanaging.

More than 125 million people have already tried out Fortnite, and the game has been downloaded more than 2 million times on the Nintendo Switch thus far. It’s also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Mac, PC, and iOS, with an Android release coming later this summer.