Within two days, it had lost control of the competition.
All eight Korean participants boycotted the second day over the handling of suspected cheating.
Krafton removed two Vietnamese participants, revoked their PUBG Partner status and, on Sunday, canceled the final day. It said prize money would be paid equally across the participating regions.
The cheating allegation remains under investigation. In the meantime, the Korean streamer at the center of the episode ended her own broadcast at 5 a.m. to write a post explaining why she had not cheated herself.
It was a major pratfall for an industry in which South Korea is a powerhouse, arriving just as esports takes a prominent place at the Asian Games in Japan.
Two Vietnamese participants, Himass and TanVuu, were found to have accessed information outside the game while running their own viewer chat on a second monitor. Krafton says it is still investigating whether they directly watched another participant's stream, used outside information during play or passed such information to teammates.
When a Korean participant first asked organizers to investigate suspected stream sniping, however, he was told it was not stream sniping.
Korean viewers then did much of the investigative work themselves, circulating clips and translations of the Vietnamese players' voice communications. Krafton has since said it is examining broadcast footage, match video and point-of-view recordings.
The Korean term for what happened is bangpeul, or "broadcast play" — watching a rival's live stream during a match to learn information unavailable inside the game.
Information, not just mechanical skill, decides matches at the top of nearly every competitive title. In a battle royale, the payoff can be instant and terminal. Knowing an opponent is prone behind the second rock on a ridgeline turns a coin-flip firefight into an execution, with no second leg in which to recover.
The target of the suspected Day 1 stream sniping was Soopi, a Korean streamer competing under Krafton's own PUBG Partner Streamer title.
Within a day, she was the one being accused.
Vietnamese accounts circulated posts claiming she had cheated, assembling their case from screenshots of programs visible on her taskbar during a replay. A link to the allegations was pinned at the top of one accuser's live chat.
"I've never done stream sniping or hacks, and I have no intention of doing it," she wrote on Sept. 20, explaining why she had cut her stream short. "My gaming PC has one monitor, so unlike a certain someone, I can't look at the internet on a second monitor beside it. I don't know why I even have to say this."
She had spent the week closing her YouTube comments and banning viewers when anti-Vietnamese slurs escalated. What came back, she wrote, was an accusation from the other side that she had been stream sniping too.
Her demand was not that Krafton ban anyone.
It was that the company strip her of its own partner title if it could not stand behind it.
"Why hand out Partner Streamer status if you can't protect us when we get sniped and cyberbullied," she wrote.
The sponsors moved first.
Coffee chain 10 Billion Coffee suspended its campaign on the morning of Sept. 20 after complaints piled up on its customer inquiry board. Kkanbu Chicken, where Nvidia's Jensen Huang shared fried chicken with the Samsung and Hyundai chairmen last October, shelved related promotions that afternoon.
On Reddit, the argument ran in every direction but repeatedly came back to one point.
"While there might still be moral criticism regarding the fact that stream-sniping isn't fair play, the responsibility for that lies with Krafton," one user posted.
Krafton rejects the premise that what collapsed was an esports tournament.
"It was clearly not an esports tournament," an official told AJP. "The accurate term would be an event match."
The company frequently offers prize money for events featuring influencers, the spokesperson said, and confusion arose partly because some Vietnamese participants happened to be professional esports players.
Krafton's formal esports leagues, she added, are run by an entirely separate department.
Inside the company, that distinction may be clear. Outside it, it was barely visible.
Asia Stars had regional rosters, professional players, a published rulebook, sponsors and a cash purse. Krafton itself promoted it as a tournament inspired by Asian Games medal events. Nothing obvious to viewers distinguished a competition backed by esports-grade safeguards from one that was not.
The esports Krafton does recognize carries stakes no hobby does.
South Korea took silver in PUBG Mobile at Hangzhou and is chasing gold in Japan. Under South Korea's military-service system, an Asian Games gold medal can qualify a male athlete for arts-and-sports service rather than regular active-duty service, making the consequence of a disputed result extend far beyond a podium.
The money is not hobby money either.
The 2025 Esports World Cup in Riyadh carried a prize pool of more than $70 million. Dota 2's The International passed $40 million in prize money in 2021.
Questions over integrity are hardly new.
South Korea's 2010 StarCraft match-fixing scandal ended with 11 players banned for life from professional StarCraft competition and criminal proceedings against those involved. Five years later, prosecutors in Changwon uncovered another StarCraft 2 match-fixing ring involving players, a coach, brokers and financial backers.
At the 2012 League of Legends world championship, evidence surfaced that a player on Korean team Azubu Frost had looked at a venue screen displaying information about his opponents. He was not the only player caught looking at screens during the tournament.
Riot Games investigated the incidents one by one, weighing what it called "intent, severity and tangible impact." It fined Azubu Frost $30,000 after concluding that the information had affected subsequent play, but allowed the match result to stand. Organizers then changed the screen setup before the final.
The case was not remarkable because esports had eliminated cheating. It was remarkable because the publisher showed its work.
More than a decade later, governance remains fragmented.
A 2025 systematic review in the International Sports Law Journal noted the continuing absence of "reliable and independent arbitral institutions" in esports and surveyed proposals ranging from universal codes of conduct to stronger independent oversight.
Krafton says it is working on the problem.
"If further violations are confirmed, we will swiftly take corresponding action, and we will transparently share the investigation results and measures to prevent a recurrence."
The company has also said future competitive events will spell out such matters as broadcast delays, restrictions on outside information, monitoring procedures and sanctions in advance.
An exhibition with a $70,000 purse is the cheapest possible place to learn that lesson.
The expensive version is a medal final, with a career and a military exemption riding on whether somebody's handset reset or somebody's second monitor was open — and nobody in the room whose job is to say so.
AJP Takeaways
- Krafton canceled the final day of its PUBG Asia Stars event on Sept. 20, 2026, after all eight South Korean participants boycotted the second day on Sept. 19 over the handling of suspected stream sniping by two Vietnamese participants.
- The event, which drew 48 participants from six regions and carried a $70,000 purse, ended without final standings; Krafton removed the two players, revoked their PUBG Partner status and will split prize money equally across regions.
- Krafton told AJP the event was an event match rather than an esports tournament, and said it would act swiftly and disclose its findings if further violations are confirmed.
- The episode coincided with the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, where esports is a medal sport across 13 titles through Oct. 2 and a gold medal can qualify South Korean men for alternative military service.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.