While it dominated the multiplayer gaming landscape in 2017, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has slowly but surely been falling to the wayside thanks to stiff competition from titles like Fortnite and The Darwin Project. In order to help keep things fresh, developer PUBG Corp has been looking outside the box in order to retain its player base and help make the title seem a bit less stale from the outside looking in. Enter the PUBG flare gun. Check out the video below to see it in action:

Quietly implemented in a patch roughly a week ago, the PUBG flare gun, when fired, summons a special airdrop not unlike the randomized air drops that occur throughout both maps, though that is where the similarities end. The crate that is dropped his carried by three parachutes and looks very different from the old red and blue crates. Additionally, when the crate lands yellow smoke billows out, rather than the red smoke found on normal airdropped crates. The crates also have the potential to yield two crate-only weapons. There can be only one flare gun-summoned plane at a time, though there can be a normal randomized air drop plane and a flare gun plane flying about at the same time.

It should be noted that the flare gun is only available via custom games at this time. That said, it is very likely that the flare gun will make it to the normal 100-man game modes at some point, so fans looking to summon their own personal air drop may not have to wait long. Keep in mind that, as with normal air drop planes, both the flare gun and the plane it summons give off both visual and audio effects, so chances are high that if a player sees you fire off a flare gun, they’ll come running. This can add a whole new level of strategy to PUBG, one that will absolutely freshen up the gameplay and make for some interesting conflicts.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is currently available for PC and Xbox One.

So, thoughts on the PUBG flare guns? Hoping that they’ll be implemented into normal game modes, or would you rather they be reserved for custom games? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!