PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is gearing up for a Halloween-themed event, it seems. 

Alongside the not-so-subtle line "Beware… Halloween approaches", the game's official Twitter feed teased the following nine-second clip.

Mysterious, darkened facility-like building? Check. Silent Hill-style nurse? Yes. Pennywise-esque clown figure camped in the rafters? Uh-huh. Big bastard machetes? Looks like it. Who knows exactly what's in store for PUBG come Hallows' Eve, but it doesn't seem pretty. 

Judging from the backdrop in the footage above, it's still day time in whichever of the battle royale's maps this is set. I understand PUBG Mobile plans a one-off night mode for Erangel—which is something I'd love to see replicated in the main game. 

But then again, perhaps daylight is preferred when we've got evil clowns and deranged nurses knocking around. I guess we'll learn more about PUBG's holiday-themed plans in the next couple of weeks. 

Playerunknown's Battlegrounds update 22 brought with it some big changes, including (finally) a ranking system, a re-enabled map selection option, and faster queue times. It also introduced a problem with matchmaking that resulted in players being slotted into matches in inappropriate regions. 

"The improved system is intended to automatically send players to the region that provides the lowest ping, but unfortunately an error related to ping calculation occurred and the player’s location wasn’t being identified correctly, resulting in them being placed into matches in a region that didn’t provide the optimal gameplay experience," PUBG Corp explained in an update. 

"Due to the large number of players affected by this issue, the gameplay experience for many players has been impacted negatively and we sincerely apologize for this."

A hotfix that will (hopefully) keep players from connecting to the wrong local region has already been rolled out, and the developers expect to have a fix for the remaining issues ready to go sometime next week. Once that's live, PUBG will properly prioritize local region selection, and will shift players to the next closest region when matchmaking pools are too small to ensure they don't end up stuck in the queue forever. 

"We understand that issues like this are extremely disruptive to how you enjoy the game and we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our loyal players," the developers said. "Our team will continue to closely monitor this issue, both through data and player feedback." 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds first trialled flare guns in March, within a titular event mode set on Miramar. They've reappeared in other limited-time forays since, and now PUBG Corp is considering installing them full-time. Live now, Flare Gun Stage 2 acts as a public beta.    

"This week’s event mode is going to be another test of the Flare Gun system," explains the developer in this Steam Community post. "We’ve looked at your feedback from the last round, but want to gather a little more data before we pull the trigger on any changes or deploy the item to live. Unlike the long event before, this test will run from Wednesday until Saturday."

Live now through October 13 at 7pm PDT / October 14 at 3am BST, PUBG Corp talks feedback, application and the future of flare guns in the main campaign:

As for the event mode itself, it mimics normal squad games with the rare chance that flare guns spawn alongside normal loot. The thinking here is to "basically beta test the Flare Gun as normal PUBG loot with the intention to add it as a rare drop to normal games once the test concludes."

Set exclusively in Erangel, Flare Gun Stage 2 pits four-person squads against one another. Weather conditions are locked on Sunny, Red Zones and general care packages are enabled, as are friendly fire and killer spectation. 

If flares are fired inside the safe zone, planes drop special care packages. If flares are fired outside the safe zone, they drop special vehicles. A map icon identifies special package locations. Good luck.