Vietnam-Korea PUBG: A Tournament Without Rules, Two Removed Accounts, and a Wave No One Has Measured

On the evening of June 15, scrolling through Vietnam's PUBG feed in a Facebook group of more than 200,000 members, I counted seventeen consecutive posts with the same format: a screenshot of a deleted game. None carried a date. None carried an account number. Just an image, and a line of text. Deleted.

That was the moment I knew I had to write this piece — not to defend anyone, but to count the numbers again.

Context: A 'friendly' tournament with no written rules

The story starts with a tournament its own organizers described as a 'friendly, entertainment-oriented event.' Within that framework, watching an opponent's livestream was permitted — or at the very least, no rule explicitly prohibited it. That is the single most important detail in this whole affair, and the detail the community blurred fastest.

Four parties are involved. First, Soopi — a Korean female streamer and an official Krafton partner, the publisher of PUBG. Second, Himass and TanVuu — two Vietnamese players removed from the tournament by the organizers. Third, the Vietnamese PUBG community — the party generating most of the pressure. Fourth, Krafton — the publisher, and the only party capable of ending this, staying silent.

According to the related posts, Soopi accused Himass and TanVuu of 'stream sniping' — watching an opponent's livestream to learn their position in-match. In PUBG, where one hundred players share a single map and locating one specific squad is a life-or-death advantage, that accusation carries far more weight than it would in League of Legends or Valorant. But the weight of an accusation is not the same as its accuracy.

Himass and TanVuu claim they asked permission beforehand. And they were competing within a tournament where stream viewing was permitted. If that is true — and so far no evidence has contradicted it — this is not a cheating case. It is a rules-interpretation dispute.

The organizers removed Himass and TanVuu anyway. The decision came after the backlash spread, not before it.

Why this is a systemic failure, not an individual one

I have spent nearly four years working with esports rulebooks, and there is one principle I learned from the 2026 confrontation with Landon Donovan: if a behavior was not explicitly prohibited in writing before it occurred, punishing it afterward is a political decision, not a legal one.

This case fits exactly. No rule in the tournament's rulebook addressed opponent-stream viewing. The organizers cited no rule when removing the two players. They simply reacted to public sentiment.

This is the core governance problem. When enforcement is driven by community pressure rather than published text, future competitors lose faith in fairness. That is far more dangerous than a single controversy — because it cannot be fixed with an apology.

There is another, under-discussed factor: Soopi is an official Krafton partner, and she competed on the same field as non-partner players. When the organizers — in a publisher-linked event — removed two non-partner players after the publisher's partner spoke up, then regardless of intent, the observable outcome is a structural favoritism.

A publisher's partner should not compete on the same field as regular players, unless transparent safeguards are published in advance. I believe this firmly, and any organizer running a partner-inclusive event has to resolve it.

On Soopi: I am not writing this so she wins or loses

This is the section where I will lose some readers.

What did Soopi go through? According to the posts, she faced pressure from critical comments, was bullied on Instagram, received constant abusive messages, and was even targeted with deepfake videos. She had just undergone surgery and had to turn off her camera during some streams. She also said some brands cooperating with her withdrew sponsorship after the drama broke.

Those are real losses. And no number — not a Vietnam uninstall figure, not a view count — justifies creating deepfake videos about a woman.

But here is what I have to say plainly: at the same time, Soopi admitted she had some incorrect points and needed to apologize to the publisher and fans, while demanding the publisher apologize to her. Those two positions cannot coexist in one consistent stance.

I am not saying she has no right to demand anything. I am saying a stance that simultaneously admits fault and demands the other side admit fault makes mediation nearly impossible, and weakens her own negotiating position.

On the Vietnamese players' side: they handled the matter through an official management company, while Soopi — as described — had no equivalent representation structure. That is an institutional asymmetry. One side has an organization behind them; the other does not. That may partly explain Soopi's sense of being outmatched.

On Krafton's side: the publisher has not spoken. That is a signal, not an empty space.

What I actually want to count: the deletion wave

Let me address the number everyone is quoting. Actually, no one is quoting a number at all.

The posts speak of a 'deletion wave,' 'mass uninstalls of PUBG,' 'community outrage.' But the source itself notes clearly: there is no independent data showing the actual scale of the deletion wave in Vietnam.

I spent three weeks learning Opta data analysis after the 2026 California Clásico incident, and there is one thing I never forget: an emotional wave on social media is not data. A thousand angry posts can be generated by a hundred people, or by ten thousand. There is no way to tell just by reading the feed.

This does not mean the outrage is not real. It means its commercial scale has not been measured. And in an industry where investment decisions rest on user data, confusing noise with numbers is an expensive mistake.

People laughed at my prediction, but nobody laughed at how I counted every number again. I cannot count this deletion wave, and I will not pretend I can.

The contrarian angle: no one in this story is a villain

This is where I may be wrong, and I know it.

The most popular framing right now is: a Korean streamer bullies the Vietnamese community, and the publisher enables it. That is an easy story to tell. It has good guys, bad guys, and a wounded nation.

But when I look at the sequence of events, I see something else. I see a tournament with no clear rules. An organizer reacting to public sentiment. A streamer losing control of her own narrative, losing both sponsorship and psychological footing. Two players losing their competitive window. A community losing trust. And a publisher staying silent, perhaps because it does not know what to do.

Every party lost. That is not the hallmark of a fight with winners and losers. It is the hallmark of a failed de-escalation at the system level.

I could be wrong here. There may be undisclosed information that makes one side clearly at fault. If so, I will write a correction, as I did in 2026 when my 'home advantage is a scam' claim was refuted by Premier League data six weeks later.

But with what is currently available, I do not see a clear villain. I see a system missing rules, and a community filling that gap with emotion.

The most important takeaway: when a publisher's partnership with a streamer is placed on the same field as regular players, no rulebook can save the situation without a mechanism published in advance. This incident will be cited many times — not because of who was right or wrong, but because it set a precedent.

What needs to happen next

Krafton needs to speak. Not with a diplomatic statement, but with a clear answer to one question: is watching an opponent's livestream prohibited in this tournament or not?

If yes, publish that rule. If not, say it is not prohibited, and let the removal decision stand on its own.

Alongside that, this incident raises a larger question for the entire esports ecosystem: should a publisher's partner compete on the same field as regular players? If so, what safeguards must be published in advance?

I do not have an answer to the second question. But I know that every day Krafton stays silent, that question gains one more person asking it.

Esports moves faster than football because esports is not afraid to be wrong. But not being afraid to be wrong does not mean being allowed to have no rules at all.