Fortnite's longest season yet will continue just a bit longer than expected. The first season of what Epic calls "Chapter 2" was originally going to conclude in the first week of February, but data miners recently found the date had shifted to later in the month. Now Epic has confirmed the news in a short blog post that hints at the reason for the delay and teases some of the incoming changes.
"With the addition of the 11.50 update, Chapter 2 - Season 2 is now expected to launch Thursday, February 20," said the developer-publisher. They referenced the game's move to Unreal Engine's Chaos physics engine and seemed to imply that migration is partly responsible for the delay.
"Beginning with the release of the 11.50 update in early February, Fortnite will be moving to Unreal Engine’s Chaos physics engine. At launch, the goal is to ensure that Fortnite still feels like Fortnite," they said while promising "some bumps" in the early days following the transition.
Epic teased fans with redacted mentions of the new marquee features too, saying "Chapter 2 - Season 2 will feature [redacted] with multiple [redacted]. We can’t brief you on all of next Season’s secrets just yet..."
As of now, data miners don't appear to have yet discovered those new features, though that has become something of a tradition with Fortnite, so it may only be a matter of time.
Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 1 began last fall after an in-game event saw the whole digital world get sucked into a black hole and the game went offline for 30 hours. When it returned, a brand new map, new items and weapons, and a range of new features such as fishing and swimming, had arrived in the game. The premiere season of Chapter 2 has now gone longer than any other season before it.
