'Fortnite' Season 8 Map Changes: Earthquakes Are Ripping the Island Apart

Rumbling deep below the surface of the Fortnite: Battle Royale island is the secret that could reshape the entire map before Season 8. There’s a lot more than just the Overtime challenges to keep us busy for the rest of the month.

Players have been reporting seismic activity in the form of in-game earthquakes in Fortnite for about a week already, and things began to get more dire Thursday and Friday as huge cracks began to emerge in the ground at various locations. The first seemingly formed Thursday southwest of Tomato Temple, a second formed north of Tomato Temple, and the third emerged overnight near Lazy Links.

So far, they’re all more or less concentrated on the northeastern quadrant of the map, for whatever that’s worth.

They’re happening at a rate of about two per day, and because this is Fortnite, plenty of data-miners have already leaked the specific times the earthquakes and crack events are happening. There’s even a website dedicated to tracking the time until each next earthquake. We’re probably looking at 22 more cracks between now and the end of Season 7.

That’s a lot.

We could be looking at the most drastic map change yet if this seismic activity gets worse as we approach the end of Season 7.

The Fortnite story has always barely made any sense, but maybe we’re finally about to learn why the Visitor visited in Season 4 and why he launched the rocket, ripping a hole in space-time and creating the huge rift in the sky. That, in turn, created the smaller rifts and, eventually, the purple cube that led to Fortnitemares, which then led to the Butterfly event.

Maybe this wasn’t just a random sequence of events just improvised, barely comprehensible events for each season. Could there be a deeper meaning linking together these events? One that makes the Fortnite island a special place in this universe to explain why it matters?

Probably not!

But I can’t help but remember the strange dragon eggs in the Ice Castle, or those kaiju rumors from several seasons ago. Maybe there’s a Godzilla-type monster deep inside the earth that’s about to emerge and destroy us all? We can only hope!

Could this transform the island into cluster of smaller islands connected by ziplines? That does seem like a strong possibility. There’s no telling what these changes might entail, but the map might not even be recognizable in two weeks.

Check out the Earthquake and Seismic Activity Megathread on the Fortnite subreddit for updates on these events and more.

*Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 7 officially ends around February 27, and we can probably expect Season 8 to start either February 28 or March 1.