PUBG Asia Stars 2026: Himass and TanVuu Removed, Vietnamese Streamers Delete the Game en Masse

On the night of September 17, 2026, Phung Thanh Do dragged the PUBG icon into the recycle bin live on his stream. No long explanation. Three seconds, one mouse click. One of the survival shooters with the largest community in Vietnam vanished from the personal computer of the man widely regarded as the country's leading gaming KOL. Hours later, Hoang Van Khoa repeated the act. Then a wave of other streamers followed. By the early hours of September 18, internet cafe owners in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang began removing PUBG from their machines — the very group whose revenue depends directly on customers opening that game.

I have followed the Vietnamese PUBG scene for years. I have seen outbursts over skins, over pricing, over server quality. Never before have I seen cafe owners personally delete the game from their machines. That detail made me sit up straight in the middle of the night.

The incident originates from PUBG Asia Stars 2026, a tournament gathering 48 players and streamers from across Asia, organised by Korean publisher KRAFTON. It is an official event, but its composition leans toward influencers rather than purely professional teams. That structure brings in large viewership while placing the entire reputational weight on each individual appearing on screen.

On September 17, Korean streamer Soopi and parts of the Korean esports community raised suspicions about two Vietnamese players: La Phuong Tien Dat, known as Himass, and Tran Tan Vu, known as TanVuu. Both held the title of PUBG Vietnam Partner — official representatives of the Vietnamese PUBG community in the publisher's activities.

The accusation centred on stream sniping: exploiting an opponent's live broadcast to gather positional information during a match. The crux lies in the fact that the tournament rulebook did not explicitly prohibit the behaviour. KRAFTON subsequently removed both from the event and revoked their Partner status. A friendly tournament became a trust crisis within a single day.

The incident must be separated into three layers, because mixing them leads to the wrong conclusion. The first layer is in-match behaviour. The second is the rule framework. The third is the community reaction. These three operate on different logics, and the gap between them is what produced the explosion.

At the behaviour layer, both players admitted opening the livestream chat and receiving outside information, while denying directly watching opponents' broadcast screens. This is the single most important point in the whole story. A partial admission makes the case far more complex than a fabricated accusation, and it also makes the case impossible to resolve with a black-and-white verdict. In PUBG, the chat window functions as an indirect radar: a player does not need to see the opponent's map, only to read one comment to infer a direction of movement. The degree of cheating therefore sits on a continuous range, not a binary switch. Korean viewers and Vietnamese defenders are arguing about two different points on that same range.

At the rulebook layer, the problem is enforcement where the text does not explicitly forbid. Organisers have the right to protect competitive integrity, but when the penalty exceeds the written regulation, the legitimacy of the decision is called into question. Revoking PUBG Vietnam Partner status is the heaviest penalty a publisher can impose on an individual within its system. It does not merely remove a name from a tournament; it severs the representative link between KRAFTON and the Vietnamese community.

Partner is not a decorative title. A Partner is a bridge: the person who organises community activities, leads the Vietnamese team at regional events, and maintains a channel of dialogue with the publisher. Every Baron steal has a corresponding far-post header in terms of obsession, and every Partner revocation has a corresponding consequence in terms of depth. Losing two Partners at once thins the Vietnamese PUBG defensive line at precisely the position hardest to patch.

At the community layer, the reaction was fast and, in effect, coordinated. Do Mixi, PewPew and many other KOLs removed PUBG from their broadcast schedules. Cafe owners removed the game en masse. The shared framing for these actions was support after an injustice. What stands out is the power structure: the Korean esports community initiated the accusation, the Vietnamese community led the boycott. That division of roles easily frames the story as centre versus periphery, governor versus governed. Such framing typically outlives the case itself.

Based on my experience following matches and esports communications crises in the region, I notice a pattern: the greatest damage comes not from the penalty but from the speed of announcing it. When a decision arrives within 24 hours of an accusation surfacing, the public assumes the conclusion preceded the investigation. KRAFTON published no detail on evidence, on broadcast delay mechanics, or on whether the event used any anti-cheat tooling. That information vacuum was filled with emotion, and emotion always leans toward the weaker party.

One thing both sides avoid saying outright needs to be said. Neither player claimed complete innocence, and the community is not claiming they are innocent — the community is protesting the handling. That is an essential distinction. Vietnamese people are not deleting the game because they believe the chat window was never opened. They are deleting it because the penalty feels heavier than the admitted fault, and because there was no channel through which to appeal.

Conversely, a few assumptions need cooling. Deleting a game is an action reversible within minutes, and it generates enormous engagement for whoever performs it. Some KOLs may be driven by both genuine anger and personal brand-building. I do not rule that out, nor do I attribute it to anyone in particular. What I do trust is the cafe owners. They are the only group in this boycott paying a real price. If they still remove PUBG, it means they believe their customer base will leave regardless of what they do.

In the summer of 2026 I learned that legends do not need to finish first, they only need someone to retell them. This episode will most likely enter Vietnamese esports memory in a similar way: not as a scandal, but as a milestone in how a community demands transparency. Damwon's silence in 2026 was not emptiness; it was history's waiting room. The silence of the Vietnamese PUBG scene right now is the same: it is waiting for a verifiable answer, accompanied by a clear rulebook for next time. If KRAFTON redesigns its Partner programme with public criteria and an independent appeals process, the case closes as a step toward maturity. If not, every future dispute will give the community one more reason to hold the mouse button down and drag to the bin.