PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds test servers are getting a series of tweaks to adjust the game's infamous blue zone - the electrical field of death which constricts play space.
Three main changes are on the way, all of which will impact the "mid-to-late phase" of a PUBG round.
First, blue zone waiting times will slightly decrease - so you'll have to hotfoot it a bit quicker.
In one month, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - you might have heard of it - has amassed 3 million players on Xbox One. This doesn't equate exactly to sales (as many of you have pointed out - my apologies) as multiple accounts can access a game on an Xbox One. PUBG raced to 1 million players in 48 hours on Xbox One.
Microsoft announced the milestone overnight, clearly pleased with itself for bringing the gaming sensation of 2017 to Xbox One before Sony looks anywhere near doing similar for PlayStation 4.
Remember, PUBG is available unfinished on Xbox One via the Xbox Game Preview programme - a kind of early access service Sony does not offer in any form on PlayStation 4. Microsoft also worked on the Xbox One conversion itself, keen to strike while the iron was hot.
Forget the silly patch notes - there are new PUBG costumes in town (on the PC test server)! Now you can dress up like a Biker or a Desperado!
The words are capitalised because they're the name of two new PUBG crates, each of which come with a whole pile of fancy dress to pop on. There's all the leather you'd expect from a Biker crate, plus a polka dot t-shirt, gas mask - for some reason - and much more. The Desperado crate, meanwhile, has awesome-looking spiky punk knuckle gloves. There's no gameplay advantage to what you wear other than stunning players with your remarkable eye for an outfit, or lack thereof.
If you're on the test server you'll be given keys and Battle Points to access the chests. Which of the four chests you'll receive is random, as are the contents, but it's weighted 40 per cent to 10 per cent in favour of the new chests, apparently, and the drop rates of contents are openly divulged.
Leather coat, hockey mask, need the rest - m4w (Erangel)
You, kitted out in black, running towards your buggy near the southern coast. Me, wearing a T-shirt, shooting hopelessly in your direction from 400 yards away. Our eyes met across the grassy field, but then you were gone. What I'd do for another chance...
--Man it turns out you murdered three minutes later
There's a new Xbox One patch for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds which targets small improvements to the game's frame count and adds an aim acceleration slider.
Other changes include a buff to weapon damage when firing on vehicles, and other unnamed PhysX and VFX enhancements.
The defining word of the patch notes is "incremental" - the description developer Bluehole used to describe many of the changes. This is not a patch which will fix all of PUBG's problems, but another step on the long road to the game reaching a state where it can leave Xbox's Game Preview programme.
Microsoft has pulled a PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds advert after a fan complained the company had copied their art.
Reddit user macsterr noticed similiarities between Microsoft's new advert and the concept they had created and posted online two months earlier.
Macsterr's image shows a PUBG character wading through a field of long grass, contained within the top of an Xbox One S, with a bright cloudy background.
You've read Eurogamer's games of 2017 list, but how did we settle on the top 10? A mixture of science and alcohol, it turns out.
Our top 50 games list was compiled via a voting process. Eurogamer staff and contributors were asked to submit their top 10 games of 2017, and points were distributed accordingly. This process provided us with an initial top 50.
Then, we all popped along to our local here in Brighton to thrash it out, with a particular focus on the top 10. We thought it would be fun to let our dear readers in on the chat (complete with all the swearing - apologies for our filthy mouths).
UPDATE 2PM: Despite months of testing, the combined excitement of everyone trying to log into PUBG has melted the servers. PC servers in all regions are down. The team is doing what it can but for the moment you'll have to, I don't know, go Christmas shopping for a couple of hours instead.
ORIGINAL STORY 11.30AM: A speedy nine months after arriving on Steam Early Access, this year's multiplayer smash hit - PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG - has launched. Our PUBG review went up this morning in case you missed it.
Full patch notes for the PUBG version 1.0 update, which introduces the new desert Miramar map, can be found on Steam (they're too lengthy to post here). To celebrate the occasion, everyone will receive a free Winner Winner Chicken Dinner t-shirt in the game when they log in.
Let's start at the top: in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, 90 to 100 players parachute from a cargo plane on to one of two islands - either temperate Erangel, which has been in the game since its early access launch, or the desert Miramar, which is new. Once on the ground these players, clad only in whatever rags that loot chests have granted them, raid abandoned buildings for weapons and scramble to kill each other while avoiding a vast forcefield that slowly closes in on a narrow area of a map. Die and you are kicked back to the title screen: survive and, er, you won. That's it. Battlegrounds can be played solo or with a team, in first or third person, but this weaponised form of hide-and-seek is what it amounts to.
This formula has made Battlegrounds one of the biggest games in the world, with a seemingly universal appeal: it is both the game that boosted Steam's presence in China and the game that my friends who play one game every five years are playing. It's a truth apparently unacknowledged that what the world really wanted was paintball-on-demand, and the rewards for the first game to successfully render this experience outside of ArmA mods and H1Z1 spinoffs are apparently limitless.
Battlegrounds is not, on the surface, a particularly elegant game. Its strengths are in scale, not detail, and it has not quite risen above the sterility shared by most games with military sims in their DNA. There are vague gestures at this being some sort of edgy TV show, a flame motif logo that looks like a bad tattoo and a cast of appallingly-dressed mute weirdos. Theme and atmosphere don't matter much here however because these things are provided by the scenario itself and, crucially, by your friends.
Fancy 3D replays will be a part of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' glitzy 1.0 release this week, on Wednesday 20th December.
The replays record what's going on around you so when you die - assuming you do, of course - you can replay what went down, seeing things from your killer's perspective, which sounds grisly, and with the freedom to pan the camera around the local area.
The idea is not only to capture great moments but to help people understand how they can do better next time. The tech can be used to track down cheaters, apparently, too. You can try the replay feature out on the PUBG test servers now if you like.