VTV3 Questions Krafton After the Himass and TanVuu Penalties: Who Really Writes the Rules for PUBG?

There are nights when I stay behind alone in the studio after going off air, rewind a broadcast that has already run, and ask myself what could make a penalty in a single game climb onto a national news bulletin. With PUBG, the answer does not lie in the penalty itself. Two Vietnamese PUBG players, Himass and TanVuu, were banned by Krafton — the South Korean publisher behind the game — from all global PUBG tournaments. The ruling did not specify which clause they were found to have breached. And VTV3, in a broadcast widely welcomed by Vietnam's esports community, did not take a side. It asked one simple thing: what exactly did these two players do, and how was the process carried out. A national broadcaster questioning a game publisher about procedure. That is a sign the story has outgrown the boundary of a single match. The context deserves a longer pause. To understand why that question carries weight, one has to look at Krafton's position. The PUBG publisher occupies a special place: it writes the competitive rules, organizes the tournaments, and issues the disciplinary rulings. In traditional sports, those three roles are usually split between different bodies — a federation, an organizing committee, and an independent disciplinary authority. In PUBG esports, they sit under one roof. That is why every time a controversial case erupts, the public gains another reason for suspicion. Not because the penalty is necessarily wrong, but because the structure makes it hard to believe it is right. The penalty against Himass and TanVuu was described as applying to every global PUBG tournament. That is the broadest possible ban short of a total career prohibition. Alongside it comes a detail worth noting: the incident is said to have occurred at a showmatch — an exhibition event, not an official stage. The players' managing teams have filed appeals. Outside the arena, Vietnam's fan community generated enormous pressure: more than 4.1 million signatures demanding justice for the two players. Prominent streamers such as Độ Mixi and PewPew spoke up. One player reportedly cried and deleted the game in frustration. One thing must be underlined: this is not the first time a disciplinary case in esports has escalated into public debate. But in Vietnam, it is likely the first time a title-level disciplinary case has drawn mainstream media attention at this scale. When a national sports bulletin devotes airtime to a penalty, the line between industry news and public news dissolves. The incident has been labeled the "Vietnam-Korea PUBG drama." From another angle, it is the story of a region growing fast in results but slow in institutions. Vietnam has just won its first esports medal at the ASIAD — a milestone confirming the region's competitive standing. Yet alongside that achievement, expectations for a mature governance apparatus grow too. What stands out most is not the penalty but the gap it exposes. In most sports, when an athlete is sanctioned, they know which clause of a published, numbered, searchable rulebook they have breached. They know which body issued the ruling, and they have the right to appeal to a panel independent of the party that punished them. In PUBG esports, the picture differs. No independent federation stands above the publisher. The publisher is the federation. When Krafton issues a penalty, no sports court sits above to review it. The appeal, even where it exists, is in the end handled by the same machinery that issued the original ruling. That structure is not fraud. It is simply an inherent knot — where the power to legislate, organize, and punish rests in a single hand. With a live-service title like PUBG, this is even more sensitive. The publisher does not only shape competitive rules; it also balances weapons, rotates maps, and adjusts mechanics with each patch. The same party shapes the playing field and referees it. In that model, the legitimacy of every ruling depends entirely on the goodwill and voluntary transparency of the publisher itself. The question VTV3 raised is therefore far from small. When a national broadcaster demands to know "which clause was breached" and "how the process unfolded," it is not merely asking about one case. It is asking about a standard that is still missing. What remains unclear: if the breach occurred at a showmatch — an exhibition, entertainment event — do the rules for official competition truly apply, and if so, are the transparency standards preserved? Or do lower-tier events exist in a gray zone where the rules are unwritten and rulings depend on each party's interpretation? VTV3 put forward a normative demand: the process must be clear and consistent, even for a showmatch. That is a reasonable ask, and also the easiest one to overlook, because it is less compelling than the "justice for the players" story. To picture this more clearly, consider how a similar case would be handled in a mature sport. In football, when a player violates the rules, the decision is issued by a disciplinary committee, an appeal can go to a higher commission, and at the top stands the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That multi-tier process is not meant to shield the player but to ensure the party issuing the ruling is not simultaneously the party running the tournament and writing the rules. In esports, the lowest tier exists — the managing teams' appeal has been filed. But the highest tier is missing. There is no independent court above the publisher. In practice, that means the appeal is being handled by the same machinery that issued the original ruling. Formally, this is not wrong. Normatively, it is not enough. This is precisely the point a national broadcaster can reach and an ordinary fan struggles to name. Nobody involved claims Krafton ruled incorrectly. What is on the table is a simple question: a rulebook whose contents no one knows, a process whose steps no one knows — how can that be considered fair, even if it truly is fair? Behind the penalty lie economic consequences that are rarely discussed. A ban from all international tournaments does not only block competitive opportunity — it cuts off income from prize money, personal sponsorship deals, and image-linked commercial activity. For players with large fanbases such as these two, commercial value does not depend entirely on competitive results — which gives them some cushion, but also reveals the scale of the case. A penalty against two ordinary people would not attract more than four million signatures. At a deeper level, this is an industry-wide problem. Any title where the publisher plays legislator, court, and organizer can reproduce this situation. The case of the two Vietnamese players is therefore not just about PUBG. It is a model — a textbook study of how esports lacks the separation of powers that mature sports federations built over decades. But here I must say something the community may not find comfortable. The story is being pushed into a binary. On one side: "justice for the players," with 4.1 million signatures and the sympathy of a broad fanbase. On the other: a silent publisher that has not disclosed the specific violation. The problem is that the very truth of what the two players did has not been stated. VTV3 does not judge whether they are guilty. The broadcaster only demands transparency. But most viewers have already assumed the players were wronged. Sympathy arrived before evidence. Years of working amid waves of emotion like this have taught me one thing: standing before an angry crowd, the hardest part is not choosing a side, but keeping enough distance to read things correctly. For if the facts later support the penalty, it is the community that will pay for a belief misplaced. And if the facts support the players, having rushed to a conclusion at the outset would not have helped the quality of the debate either. There is another, subtler risk: turning this case into a confrontation between two cultures. The "Vietnam-Korea drama" label sounds dramatic, but it tends to lead readers toward conclusions shaped by stereotype rather than toward the core question — how to make the governance machinery more transparent. This is not a war between two countries. It is a hole in how a discipline is organized. Framing it as a national matter only blurs what matters most. A South Korean publisher, a Vietnamese broadcaster, and two players caught in between — all are meshes in the same incomplete governance structure. There are nights when I call out the name of a match, and the stadium echoes back only my own voice. The case of Himass and TanVuu may sit in such a room — where a national broadcaster's voice rings out, yet a respondent is not guaranteed to be found. The match does not end when the stadium lights go out — it only changes listeners. What is unfolding in Vietnam now will be recorded as a lesson for an esports scene growing faster than its own rules. What to watch in the coming weeks is very concrete: whether the appeal is granted; whether Krafton discloses the breached clause and the steps taken; whether community pressure keeps escalating; and whether this case becomes a catalyst for a more transparent esports governance framework in Vietnam. A first ASIAD medal has proven Vietnam can compete on the international stage. What is missing is a system strong enough to protect the very people who brought home that achievement. If this case forces the public and stakeholders to ask questions the industry has never posed before, then it has produced value — even if that value came from a crack. The question is no longer "who is right, who is wrong." The question is: how will the system be fixed so that next time a player is sanctioned, both the fans and the player himself will know exactly where they stand.