FORTNITE players were left baffled on Sunday evening after a strange event dramatically altered the game's map.

The mysterious cube (nicknamed Kevin) has been floating around the map for ages – and finally disappeared.

In the run up to Halloween, the central building in Loot Lake was lifted up, revealing a huge purple cube underneath.

This structure has been moving around seemingly at random, offering no clues as to its origin or purpose.

But yesterday, the cube began melting, then dripping, and then glowing and spinning.

Finally, it disappeared completely – sucking players into a strange white realm that's never been accessible in the game before.

The new area was surreal, featuring strange structures and creatures, and a new floating movement mechanism.

This only lasted for a few minutes before players were returned back to Fortnite proper.

But when they got back, it became apparent that Loot Lake had completely disappeared, and had been replaced by a brand new area.

The watery region now has lots of miniature islands dotted around, featuring trees and rocks.

It's also tiered, with an inset area that's lower down – and marked by a Stonehenge-style feature in the middle.

Water still remains, but there's significantly less than when Loot Lake was still there.

It's not clear if Loot Lake will ever be returned, but we'd guess the new area is here to stay.

The event wasn't exactly a surprise – players had been pre-warned that it would happen, and even sent a push notification to mobile Fortnite players.

Some players even complained that they were unable to log on due to the huge rush in players logging on.

One Twitter user wrote: "Lmao the cube event took the servers down", and posted a screengrab of a "Login Failed" message on the game.

The game message read: "Unable to connect to Fortnite servers. Please try again later."

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Read about theories on whether Fortnite has died here.

Fortnite was in hot water earlier this year after "jiggly boobs" in the game upset fans.

And divorce papers recently revealed that Fortnite was destroying as many as 4,500 marriages a year.

What do you think of Fortnite's recent map changes? Let us know in the comments!