VTV3 speaks out on Esports law and organization system after penalties for Himass and TanVuu

At 2:14 a.m. Beijing time, on the day Krafton's penalties became widely known, I received a message from a contact on the organizing committee of a Southeast Asian PUBG event. It contained one sentence: "TanVuu just deleted the game from his computer." I did not screenshot that message. It was not necessary. But I kept it in my head, because it is the only detail in this entire story that cannot be disputed — a young man had just removed from his computer the very thing he had spent years mastering. I was once an esports athlete. I once sat in a competition room, heard my teammates clicking their mice, and experienced the feeling of being removed from a tournament for technical reasons no one explained clearly. So when I read that Himass and TanVuu had been banned by Krafton from all global PUBG tournaments, I did not react as a market commentator. I reacted as someone who has been in that position. But what makes this story different is not the penalty. It is that VTV3 — Vietnam's national broadcaster — spoke out. And they did not speak to judge guilt. They spoke to ask a question the entire esports industry avoids: Where is the law, and who writes it? That is why I decided to write this piece. Not to defend the two players. Not to accuse the publisher. But to retell this story the way it deserves to be told — with full context of culture, power structure, and the specific people caught in the middle. Once again, I must recall the professional principle that has followed me for eighteen years: dehumanization begins with the way we name a person as data. Himass and TanVuu are not "two banned players." They are two Vietnamese men, born in a country where esports was officially recognized only a few years ago, who somehow climbed high enough that a South Korean publisher had to name them in a global announcement. Before any analysis, I want to be clear: I do not know whether they violated anything. VTV3 does not assert that either. And I believe that my not knowing is precisely the most important point of this story. Krafton is the publisher of PUBG. This is a basic detail, but it is the key to understanding the whole story. In esports, unlike football or athletics, there is no independent federation governing the discipline. There is no FIFA of PUBG. No UEFA of PUBG. No independent ethics committee with authority over the publisher. There is only Krafton. Krafton sets the competitive rules. Krafton organizes the tournaments. Krafton issues penalties for violations. These three roles sit within one apparatus, and that is precisely the point VTV3 aimed at when it spoke out. Specifically, the penalties against Himass and TanVuu have the broadest possible scope: a ban from all international PUBG events organized or sanctioned by Krafton. This is the heaviest form of punishment a publisher can apply, second only to permanent erasure. For a professional player, it is equivalent to having their entire international career path removed in one stroke. The problem lies elsewhere. According to what VTV3 published, the broadcaster was not provided with clear information about which specific clause the two players violated, under which regulatory framework, and how the handling process unfolded. They only knew the final result: a penalty. In football, when a player is suspended, FIFA or a national federation publishes the violated clause — for example, "violation of Article 12 on unsporting conduct during the match of..." — together with the duration and the right of appeal. Here, we have a penalty but lack the accompanying legal clause. That is why VTV3 had to speak. Another little-noticed detail: the incident involved a tournament VTV3 called a "showmatch tournament" — an exhibition event, more performative than officially competitive. If the penalty applies to an exhibition event with the same standard as official competition, then the question of proportionality between fault and punishment becomes more urgent than ever. This is not a small detail. It is the axis of the whole problem: what type of event carries what type of responsibility, and who decides that boundary. Vietnam is not an emerging esports power in the naive sense. We have a large fanbase, regionally significant streamers such as Độ Mixi and PewPew, and above all Vietnam's first-ever esports medal at an ASIAD. Those achievements show Vietnam's competitive potential has been asserted at the international level. The paradox lies there. When competitive achievement outpaces governance capacity, incidents like the Himass and TanVuu penalties become the rule rather than the exception. A mature esports scene is not measured by medal count, but by its ability to protect its athletes from ambiguous decisions made from outside. The incident has created an unprecedented wave of reaction. According to VTV3 and related media, as many as 4.1 million signatures were collected demanding justice for the two players. This figure, though its origin needs further verification, reflects one clear thing: the Vietnamese PUBG community is at its highest state of mobilization. A streamer recounted witnessing a Vietnamese player cry and delete the game on livestream. The incident has even moved beyond esports to become a topic on a national television program. When the story of two young gamers crosses the boundary of the gaming community and enters the living rooms of Vietnamese families, it is both a positive sign of esports entering daily life and a warning sign about the absence of a transparent resolution mechanism. This is the first time an esports disciplinary case has been placed on mainstream media's table at national scale, and its pioneering nature makes every subsequent development a precedent. In football, there is FIFA. In tennis, there are the ATP and WTA. In Olympic sports, there is the International Olympic Committee and independent sport federations. Every mature sport has at least two layers: one organizing competition, one overseeing the rules. This principle of separation of powers exists not only to prevent abuse, but to create trust among participants. Esports has an apparatus that merges all of it: Krafton sets the rules, organizes tournaments, and issues penalties for violations. This is a governance model of "player, referee, and judge in one person." It works efficiently in the early period because decisions are fast, but it exposes limitations as the community scales. When a player is penalized, where do they appeal? In principle, they can file a complaint with the very department that issued the penalty. This is not an independent mechanism. In legal doctrine, the principle nemo iudex in causa sua — no one is a judge in their own case — is regarded as the foundation of procedural justice. Krafton, as publisher and simultaneously the party initiating the penalty, cannot satisfy this basic principle. According to information VTV3 published, both players are represented by management teams, and those teams have formally appealed. The existence of an appeal shows an internal review mechanism exists. But that mechanism sits in the publisher's hands, not with any independent arbitration body. The existence of an appeals mechanism, therefore, does not equate to the existence of procedural justice. This is the gap every young legal system must cross. This is the section I want to spend the most time on, because with my experience analyzing transfer deals — from the Paulinho case to more complex negotiations in the Asian market — I have always believed the truth lies in structural detail, not in the surface number. Payment structure is where the soul of a deal resides. And so is the structure of a penalty. A global competition ban has three hidden structural layers that we miss if we only look at the result. The first layer is scope. The penalty is not limited to the event where the violation occurred, but extends across all international PUBG events. This shows Krafton operates a unified competitive-eligibility registry, not per-event rulings. This is a manifestation of centralized governance — on one hand allowing fast, consistent reaction; on the other, making any error spread system-wide. The second layer is duration. We have not been given clear information on how long the penalty lasts, whether it is time-limited, or whether it is indefinite. For a professional player whose peak career lasts roughly five to seven years, an unclear duration means an inability to plan a career. A twenty-two-year-old banned indefinitely loses the chance to accumulate international experience during the fastest developmental stage of the profession. This is a procedural injustice greater than the penalty itself. The third layer is legal basis. No specific violated clause has been publicly disclosed. VTV3 pressed precisely this point: they want to know exactly what the two players violated. When the basis is not stated, not only is the sanctioned party deprived of the chance to defend themselves, but the whole community is deprived of the chance to learn and avoid similar mistakes. A law that is not published is a law that cannot be consciously followed. Compare with football: when Luis Suarez was banned for four months for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the 2026 World Cup, FIFA clearly published the violated clause, duration, scope of application, and the right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Every party knew where they stood. Here, we have no comparable information. When Paulinho moved from Guangzhou Evergrande to Barcelona with a forty-million-euro release clause in 2026, media rushed to report that the entire sum was paid at once. I was one of those who made that mistake. In reality, the deal was split into three installments, with appearance-related conditions. A colleague forced me to correct it, and I spent a month reviewing every press-conference tape to understand where I went wrong. I learned that the surface number always disguises a more complex structure. The Himass and TanVuu penalties are the same. When a controversial case like Himass and TanVuu erupts, the public's natural reaction is to side with the players and against the publisher. I understand and share that emotional reaction. But I believe we are looking at the wrong center, and that makes Vietnamese esports miss the biggest opportunity from this very incident. The counterintuitive point is this: if Krafton can produce a clear rule, a transparent process, and convincing evidence that the two players violated that rule — then this penalty may still be correct. Conversely, if Krafton cannot, then whether the two players are innocent becomes a secondary detail. Why? Because the essence of VTV3's question is not guilt or innocence, but mechanism or no mechanism. VTV3 did something very clever in communication terms: it refused to judge whether the two players violated anything, while demanding Krafton make the process transparent. This frames the issue at the systemic level, detached from mob emotion. It allows the story to persist even after emotions cool, because the question of mechanism never disappears on its own. In eighteen years observing the sports industry, I have learned one thing: individual cases pass, but systemic holes remain. If we only resolve the Himass and TanVuu case without patching the hole, ten years from now there will be another Himass, another TanVuu, in another discipline, with another publisher. And then the question "what did they violate" will echo again with no one to answer. There is a notable regional nuance here. The story is publicly called the "Vietnam-Korea PUBG drama." Applying a penalty to two Vietnamese players by a South Korean publisher carries emotional weight that a purely technical case would not. I do not believe Krafton acts with national discrimination. But I do believe procedural injustice, when left uncorrected, cloaks itself in the garment of national injustice. This is how two different problems get conflated, and both become harder to solve. This is also the moment I turn the lens on myself. We — the commentators — are sometimes the ones holding the scissors that cut people into fragments. I once wrote an article about the 2026 World Cup calling it an "informal trading floor" and was accused by the online community of dehumanizing players. I had to interview twelve fans at sports bars in Beijing to understand what they really wanted to read. That experience taught me that in every penalty, before being a violator or a victim, the protagonist is a person. And that person has a private story never told on the news. I entered esports transfer analysis after years following European football. Applying football's financial governance framework to a young esports market is something I do regularly, but I always remind myself to be careful. Why? Because football has an intermediary layer esports lacks: national federations, continental confederations, FIFA, and above all the Court of Arbitration for Sport as the final independent adjudicator. When financial rules emerged and big clubs were investigated, they could take their cases to court. The court's decision could overturn the original one, and that kept the system legitimate. Esports has no equivalent body. No independent adjudication layer has authority over publishers. When Krafton rules, no layer sits above to review it. This is the fundamental difference, and it explains why disputes in esports often drag on in deadlock and end with one side walking away. It is not FFP that saved football, but the people willing to sit down when everything collapses. The 2026 pandemic taught me that. I once organized a four-hour online forum with fan-representative groups from Leicester City, Valencia, and three other clubs, along with sports economists, to discuss how football could survive COVID-19. The memorandum I compiled afterward was sent to several league executives. Many participants told me they felt truly heard. What I learned is not that regulations keep football standing. It is people — those willing to sit down and talk — who hold the system together. Esports lacks precisely those people at the intermediate layer. There is no fan group with an official voice. No players' union with bargaining authority. No mechanism forcing the publisher to sit down with stakeholders before making decisions. The Himass and TanVuu case exposes exactly that gap. And that gap cannot be filled by a reduced penalty or a belated apology. A case like this affects more than two players. It creates a domino effect across multiple layers of the industry. Upstream, Krafton bears reputational pressure. It is no accident that a national broadcaster like VTV3 entered the fray. When a story crosses beyond the gaming community and touches a mass audience, the communication cost of silence rises exponentially. Krafton may not change the penalty, but it likely must change how it communicates penalties in the future — starting with publishing the violated clause as part of the official announcement. Midstream, Vietnamese player-management teams are learning an important lesson about the value of professional legal and communications representation. Previously, many Southeast Asian teams operated through personal relationships, lacking documentation. This incident may accelerate that professionalization. When contracts are drafted carefully, when appeal rights are stated clearly, when channels of communication with the publisher are established in advance, future cases will depend less on individual luck. Downstream, Vietnam's fan community has demonstrated collective strength with 4.1 million signatures. But that enormous number also raises a question about the balance between passion and information. The crowd has concluded the two players are innocent, while the truth about the violation remains undisclosed. This is a parallel risk both Krafton and the community must manage. If the truth later shows a violation, the community has staked its honor on a wrong conclusion. If the truth shows no violation, Krafton has lost the trust of an important market. At the industry level, this may be a catalyst for discussions on establishing an independent esports governance mechanism in Vietnam. A players' association, an ethics committee, an independent arbitration mechanism — all theoretically feasible. The question is political will and organizational resources to turn theory into reality. And a larger question: a national mechanism cannot bind a global publisher without international consensus. There is an aspect both sides — Krafton and the community — tend to overlook. Krafton overlooks that in esports, the legitimacy of a decision does not come from its intrinsic correctness, but from community acceptance. In football, a penalty is accepted because it comes with a process verified over decades. In esports, every penalty must build its legitimacy from scratch, and the only way to do that is transparency down to the smallest detail. Krafton has built an impressive global competition system, but that system still lacks a matching layer of legitimacy. The community overlooks that a bad penalty can still stem from a real violation. Krafton not publishing the clause does not automatically mean no clause was violated. It is possible the clause exists but is interpreted ambiguously, especially when the incident involves an exhibition event with a different character from official competition. This is a point both sides may have to concede. And a community willing to acknowledge this possibility will have a stronger voice in demanding transparency. I believe this is why VTV3 chose the framing "do not judge, only demand transparency." It is the only way to keep the dialogue from collapsing into an emotional war. If VTV3 sided wholly with the players and declared them innocent, it would lose its intermediary standing. If it sided with Krafton, it would betray the community. The path it chose — standing in the middle and asking a structural question — is the only way this story can continue to be told usefully. In my profession, I have always believed a good question is worth more than a quick answer. And VTV3 asked the right question. A national broadcaster bringing the issue to air is not an interference in professional matters. It is an act of protecting the public — the fans who have invested time, money, and emotion in a discipline they need to believe is fair. I will not promise anything about the outcome. But I can predict possible scenarios, based on experience tracking similar cases. The first, worst scenario: both penalties are upheld, appeals are rejected, and Krafton publishes nothing further about the violated clause. In this case, Krafton's reputation in the Vietnamese market suffers long-term damage, the community remains polarized, and resentment accumulates for future cases. Vietnamese esports loses a chance to reform, and ten years later we will see this same scenario again. The second, middle scenario: penalties are reduced or upheld, but Krafton publishes the violated clause and handling process, partially satisfying VTV3's demand. In this case, the story ends with a modest but important systemic lesson, and a precedent is set that publishers must explain publicly. The two players still lose their international careers, but the community gains an additional standard to demand next time. The third, best scenario: appeals succeed in part or in full, and the case becomes a catalyst for genuine governance reform in which exhibition events also apply the same transparency standards as official competition. This is the least likely scenario, but also the most valuable in the long run. Whichever scenario occurs, one thing I am certain of: this is only the first chapter of a longer story about how esports learns to govern itself. Similar cases will recur, not only in PUBG but in every title controlled by a single publisher. As the list of such titles grows, pressure for an independent governance mechanism will grow with it. And the question is no longer whether such a mechanism will emerge, but how many more Himass and TanVuu cases it will take. There is one thing I want to make clear before closing. What I write here is based on public information and related sources, not an established verdict. I do not assert the two players are innocent. I do not assert Krafton is wrong. I only assert that a system can only endure long-term when it is transparent, and a debate can only be useful when it maintains caution toward the truth. Every hasty conclusion has a cost, and that cost is usually paid by those with the least voice. I once made a mistake early in my career by rushing to publish a number without verifying the structure behind it. It was August 2026, when I was twenty-five, working as an assistant editor at a football site in Beijing. When Barcelona activated the forty-million-euro release clause to bring Paulinho back from Guangzhou Evergrande to Europe, I rushed to publish an article claiming the entire sum was paid at once. In reality, the deal was split into three installments, with appearance-related conditions. A colleague discovered the error and forced me to correct it. For a month afterward, I reviewed every press-conference tape, contract template, and release-fee comparison table in China to find the pattern. I learned that the surface number always disguises a more complex structure. Since then, every piece of mine includes a section analyzing payment structure and binding clauses, rather than simply stating a bare fee. I tell that story here because it relates directly to the Himass and TanVuu case. The global penalty Krafton applied is not a single act. It is the result of a series of decisions, a process, a set of rules, and a power structure. When we look only at the ending — a global ban — we overlook the entire structure behind it. And when we overlook structure, we cannot change it. Once again, I must remind myself: every contract begins with a person, before it becomes a number. And so does every penalty. Behind each line of an announcement reading "banned from all global tournaments" is a specific person with a specific career, a specific family, and a specific future hanging in the balance. When we forget that, we cease to be storytellers. We are merely typists. I do not know whether Himass and TanVuu violated anything. I do not know whether their appeals will succeed. I do not know whether VTV3 will continue pursuing this story. But one thing I know for sure: how we handle this case will shape how Vietnamese esports confronts future cases. As I sit writing this, I remember the image of a young player deleting the game from his computer at two in the morning. In this world, we often use the word "ecosystem" to speak of abstract structures — publishers, tournaments, communities, media. But every ecosystem is made of specific people. When a person removes what they have spent years pursuing, that is a signal the ecosystem should not ignore. The transfer market is a broken mirror; whoever looks into it long enough will see themselves. And so is the penalty story. Look at the Himass and TanVuu case long enough, and we see not only Krafton, not only the two players, but the entire governance system we are running together. The question is no longer "who is right, who is wrong." The question is: when the next similar case occurs, do we already have a better mechanism to handle it? If not, then Himass and TanVuu will not be the last lesson. And the people who pay for the system's delay will again be specific people, with names, with ages, and with a career hanging in the balance. I write this piece to record that moment. Not to demand justice for two players — that is beyond a writer's authority. But to remind that each time the system goes unreformed, a future teammate of ours will learn this same lesson from the beginning. And when too many teammates have had to learn the same lesson, the problem is no longer with them. The problem is with the system we allowed to run without anyone willing to sit down.