Is Stream Sniping Ever OK for a Pro? A Korean View of the HIMASS and TANVUU Bans
A Korean view of the PUBG Asia Stars bans: why ‘it was only a friendly’ does not excuse stream sniping by professionals, what the community screenshots show since Krafton’s 2026-09-23 lifetime bans, and why Soopi’s agency is preparing legal action over false claims and doctored images.
TL;DR — On 2026-09-23 Krafton permanently banned the PUBG accounts of Vietnam-region pros HIMASS and TANVUU and barred both for life from every official PUBG competition, after finding that they had used other participants’ live broadcasts during PUBG Asia Stars 2026. In Vietnam the case is being argued as an overreaction to a friendly creator event with no written rule. Seen from Korea, the question has a short answer: a professional who watches an opponent’s stream in the middle of a match is cheating, whatever the event is called. What kept Korean communities angry for a week was what came after — a partial apology, a counter-accusation against the victim, copyright takedowns of the evidence and, according to a widely shared screenshot, an apology post deleted once the ban landed. Soopi’s agency is now preparing legal action over false claims and doctored images.
Perspective — this piece is written from the Korean side of the argument. The neutral, dated record is in our timeline of the controversy. Community screenshots are reproduced for commentary with links to the original posts; ordinary users’ names are blurred.
Where things stand on 2026-09-24
| Players | HIMASS (Anyone’s Legend), TANVUU (The Expendables) |
| Finding | obtained, through other participants’ live broadcasts or outside sources, information that normal match play would not reveal, and used it in their decisions and tactics |
| Evidence reviewed | official broadcast, participant footage, in-game data, replays |
| Sanction | permanent PUBG account bans; permanently ineligible for every official league in every region, including PGC, PGS and PNC, and for any esports event Krafton organises or approves |
| Appeal | both may contest the decision through the established esports procedure |
| Victim | Krafton apologised to Soopi as the person most harmed and is requesting the removal of false claims, ridicule and illegal composite posts about her |
[PUBG official notice] [Gameple] [DigitalToday]
The Vietnamese case, stated fairly
The other side deserves its strongest form before it is answered.
- “It was a friendly.” PUBG Asia Stars was an invitational that mixed professionals with partner streamers. RAMBO, a streamer on Vietnam’s team for the event, argued that it was an exchange between creators and that its initial rules did not clearly ban stream sniping. [Thể thao & Văn hóa]
- “Krafton ran it badly.” Krafton agrees. Its 2026-09-21 apology admitted there had been no preventive measures, no criteria for judging violations, no defined sanction levels, and Korean and Vietnamese notices that did not match. GAM x The Expendables, TANVUU’s organisation, disputed that this was a “serious violation” deserving a lifetime ban. [Thể thao & Văn hóa]
- “The whole scene is against it.” Prominent Vietnamese creators including Độ Mixi, DjChip and PewPew criticised the handling, and many streamers, players and some PC cafés uninstalled PUBG in public. A statement on PUBG’s official Facebook page drew hundreds of thousands of angry reactions. [Press The Game] [Thanh Niên] [Dân Trí]
The first two points are real. Neither makes stream sniping acceptable.
The Korean answer: there is no “friendly” exception for pros
1. Nobody needs a rule to know this. Every competitive player learns early that looking at the opponent’s screen is cheating. Stream sniping is the same act with a browser tab in between. A missing clause in an invitational’s rulebook is a gap in the paperwork, not a permission — and Krafton said it had never officially permitted watching other participants’ broadcasts or using outside information in any league or event, and had not applied different standards to different regions. [PUBG official notice] [Pointe]
2. The bar is higher for a pro, not lower. Krafton’s wording is that professional players are held to a higher standard of fairness, responsibility and dignity than other participants, and that the standard applies regardless of prize money, the nature of the event or who is taking part. That is the Korean position in one sentence. HIMASS and TANVUU were not in that lobby as casual guests. They were invited as professionals; the title was the reason for the invitation.
3. A streamer event runs on trust. At an event built around partner streamers, the other side’s broadcast is not something you stumble into — broadcasting is what they were invited to do. The format only works if every participant agrees not to use it. Watching it mid-match turns the thing the event was built around into a weapon against the people it invited.
4. It was not a pickup game. There was a USD 70,000 prize pool, sponsors and an official broadcast. Three Korean sponsors suspended their involvement on the day the event was cancelled. Whatever the event was called, the players, the sponsors and the money treated it as competition.
5. Korea has seen integrity cases end careers before. In 2010 KeSPA banned eleven StarCraft players for life, Ma Jae-yoon among them, over match fixing. [Wikipedia (ko)] Stream sniping is not match fixing. But the lesson Korean esports took from 2010 — that an integrity violation is a question about a career, not a fine — is why a lifetime ban reads here as severe but not strange.
Whether a lifetime ban is proportionate is a fair question, and the appeal route exists to answer it. From Korea, the length of the ban matters less than the principle it sets: calling an event a friendly does not suspend fair play.
What made it worse: the week in screenshots
The sniping itself was established within days. The first apology, on 2026-09-18, admitted reading chat but not watching broadcasts; Krafton confirmed both three days later. What kept Korean communities going was the conduct around it. The five FMKorea posts below had more than 2.7 million views between them by the morning of 2026-09-24.
“You’ll know by tomorrow” — then the uninstall
FMKorea, posted 2026-09-23 00:35 KST, 386,428 views. The image at the top of this page is the second frame of the same post: TANVUU uninstalling PUBG from Steam on stream.
On stream the night before Krafton’s notice, TANVUU told viewers they would probably know “by tomorrow” whether the news was good or bad, and that he had not been allowed to say in advance (as translated in the post). Then he uninstalled PUBG on camera. Vietnamese press dated the uninstall to 2026-09-22, after a meeting with his team. [Thanh Niên] After the ban he posted “Đổi nghề” — “change of career” — and said he should have focused on streaming rather than entering competitive events like this one. [Dân Trí]
From Korea, what stands out is what that message regrets: entering the event, not the stream sniping Krafton found — which neither player has admitted in any public statement we could find.
The apology, deleted
FMKorea, posted 2026-09-23 18:35 KST, 528,155 views. The original title contains an insult and is cropped out; chat names are blurred.
The capture comes from his own stream: his Facebook page, with the menu open on a post. The poster’s claim is that he took the apology down as soon as he had read the notice. We found no news report confirming it, so treat it as a community claim with a screenshot rather than a verified fact. If it is accurate, the sequence speaks for itself: the apology lasted exactly as long as a lighter sanction still seemed possible.
The evidence, removed by copyright claim
FMKorea, posted 2026-09-21 03:32 KST, 526,341 views, quoting Namuwiki. Thumbnails showing faces are cropped out.
Two of Soopi’s YouTube videos on the incident went offline with YouTube’s notice that they had been removed following a copyright takedown request by Himass. If the clips used footage of his broadcast, the claim may have been within his rights. It also took evidence against him offline while the case was still open. Namuwiki’s editors described the videos as having been silenced.
The pro clients, deleted
FMKorea, posted 2026-09-23 11:13 KST, 342,059 views.
The poster explains that the “Esport A” and “Esport B” builds are clients used for official competition and pro scrims, not available to ordinary players, and says HIMASS deleted both. The clip shows him in League of Legends. Vietnamese press reported that the community had spotted him downloading Delta Force. [Thanh Niên] His post-ban status read “Chính thức thất nghiệp” — “officially unemployed”. [Dân Trí]
RAMBO: “I won’t play PUBG any more”
FMKorea, posted 2026-09-22 22:22 KST, 940,660 views — the most-viewed post in this set. Headline: “RAMBO: I won’t play PUBG from now on, I’ll look for another game.”
Why Korean communities say RAMBO “lit the fire”:
- Who he is. A streamer on Vietnam’s team at the event (“Team VIE”); Korean posts describe him as a former PUBG pro with a far larger following than either banned player. [Press The Game] [Ruliweb]
- What he posted. By 2026-09-21, Kenh14 reported, he had shared what he presented as evidence that Soopi had the tournament stream open in a browser tab during play — in other words, that the accuser had stream-sniped too. [Kenh14] [Kenh14]
- What he said. On stream he accused Soopi of choosing to “invite Korean streamers and players to make videos attacking our players” rather than “a peaceful way to resolve the matter”, and said that “everything that has happened up to now is because of that girl…” (Press The Game’s translation). [Press The Game]
- What Korean users say it did. Korean posts accuse him of 좌표 찍기 — literally “dropping coordinates”, pointing an audience at a target — on Soopi’s SOOP replay, and blame him for the harassment that followed. That is a community accusation, not a finding by Krafton or anyone else. [Ruliweb]
What the record says about the claim against Soopi: Krafton’s investigation reviewed the official broadcast, participant footage, in-game data and replays. It sanctioned two Vietnam-region players, apologised to Soopi as the person most harmed, and is requesting the removal of false claims about her. Soopi has said her gaming PC has a single monitor. [Artive News]
On 2026-09-22 RAMBO said he would stop playing PUBG and look for another game (above); another FMKorea post says he uninstalled it and ended his stream. [FMKorea]
The harm to Soopi, and the legal response
The Korean streamer at the centre of this is the player who was sniped. A post claiming she had stream-sniped too was pinned in HIMASS’s stream chat; Inside Vina reported the claim as fabricated. She has said she had been removing viewers who posted slurs against Vietnamese people from her own chat — and that what came back was the fabricated accusation. She closed comments on her YouTube channel and asked Krafton to remove her partner status. [Inside Vina] [Artive News]
Credit where it is due: HIMASS has asked his supporters to stop attacking Soopi and any other players, streamers or communities. [Dân Trí]
On 2026-09-23 Krafton apologised to Soopi as the person most harmed. It said it would request the deletion and blocking of false claims, ridicule and illegal composite posts, cooperate fully with her agency on legal action, and support her recovery and protection. [DigitalToday] [4th.kr]
Her agency, IM Brand, went further the same day:
IM Brand notice, as reproduced in a Ruliweb post on 2026-09-23.
In summary, IM Brand says it:
- is collecting material on malicious false claims, slander and illegal productions circulating in Vietnam, and is preparing legal action through a local law firm;
- is reviewing with Korean counsel what legal action the relevant laws allow if people involved in threats, false claims or illegal content enter Korea;
- has agreed with Krafton on active support for the safety and rights of its creators;
- asks the public not to spread unverified claims and to refrain from excessive slander and aggressive responses, so the dispute does not grow.
Korean communities call the doctored images deepfakes. The official wording is narrower: “illegal composite posts” from Krafton, “illegal productions” and “illegal content” from IM Brand. We have not seen the images and will not describe them.
Where the Korean side should hold the line
Stream sniping by a professional is not a grey area, and a “friendly” label does not change that. But the Korean argument is only as strong as the way it is made. IM Brand’s request is the right standard: no unverified claims, no pile-ons, and no turning two players’ conduct into a verdict on a country. Soopi says she was removing anti-Vietnamese slurs from her own chat when the accusation against her appeared. Vietnamese fans are right that Krafton ran this badly — Krafton said so first. None of that makes what happened on day one fair play.
FAQ
Is stream sniping against PUBG’s rules? Krafton says it has never officially permitted watching other participants’ broadcasts or using outside information in any league or event, and that the same standard applies regardless of prize money, event type or who is taking part.
What exactly are HIMASS and TANVUU banned from? Their PUBG game accounts, permanently, and every official league in every region — PGC, PGS and PNC included — plus any esports event Krafton organises or approves.
Can they appeal? Yes, through the established esports procedure. No appeal outcome had been published as of 2026-09-24.
Did Soopi stream-snipe too? That claim circulated in Vietnam, including in RAMBO’s post and in a message pinned in HIMASS’s chat. Krafton sanctioned only the two Vietnam-region players, apologised to Soopi as the person most harmed, and is asking for false claims about her to be removed.
What legal action is Soopi’s agency taking? IM Brand says it is preparing action in Vietnam through a local law firm over false claims, slander and illegal productions, and is reviewing with Korean counsel what action is possible if people involved in threats, false claims or illegal content enter Korea.
What are the two players doing now? TANVUU uninstalled PUBG on stream and has been on other games; HIMASS has been streaming League of Legends and was reported to be downloading Delta Force.
Sources: PUBG official notice, Gameple, Seoul Economic Daily, DigitalToday, 4th.kr, Pointe, Dân Trí, Dân Trí, Thanh Niên, Thể thao & Văn hóa, Kenh14, Kenh14, Press The Game, Inside Vina, Artive News, Wikipedia (ko). Community posts: FMKorea 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Ruliweb 1, 2, 3. Claims that appear only in community posts are labelled as such.
Images: cropped screenshots of the FMKorea and Ruliweb posts linked in each caption. Ordinary users’ names are blurred and the victim’s face is not shown.
← Back to all posts