Fortnite players are perplexed by a new and mysterious countdown appearing throughout the game.

Players of the game on Nintendo's Switch – where it was only just released – are seeing a countdown on TVs across the game's map. It doesn't appear for players on any of the other platforms the game is available on.

What the countdown refers to, and what will happen when it reaches zero, is entirely unknown. There do not appear to be any further clues that any update is coming.

It is also not clear why the countdown is only appearing on Switch. Despite the different hardware the game can be played on, all consoles are expected to receive the same updates at the same time – so that Fornite can continue allowing cross-platform play.

Those facts have led some to suggest that the countdown is ticking towards the one update that would be specific to Switch players: a change to the highly controversial rule that means players on the Switch find themselves logged out of their PlayStation accounts, forcing them to lose their progress and pay for any upgrades twice over.

That rule was discovered soon after the game was release for the Switch. And it has brought with it a huge backlash, with players requesting that Sony and Nintendo work together to fix the problems.

But there is no real evidence to backup that theory, and it seems unlikely that developers Epic would choose to draw attention to the furore in such a public way.