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

In an evening broadcast, VTV3 placed on the table a question few in the Vietnamese esports industry want to answer head-on: what exactly did Himass and TanVuu violate, and how was that penalty process carried out? The national broadcaster did not say the two players are innocent. They did not judge who is right and who is wrong. What they demanded is transparency in a system the public follows every single day. When a mainstream media outlet steps into a story that once circulated only within the gaming community, the signal is not about who gets punished. The signal is this: esports has grown large enough that it can no longer settle its own matters in the dark. In years of following PUBG tournaments, I learned one thing: in this discipline, the publisher does not just sell the game. They also control the competitive arena itself, and that is precisely where every controversy begins.

This case revolves around two Vietnamese players. Himass and TanVuu were penalized by Krafton - the South Korean publisher behind PUBG - with a ban from all global PUBG tournaments. The scope is the broadest possible: not one event, not one region, but the entire competition system controlled by this publisher. The management teams of both players have filed appeals, meaning the story is far from closed. Within the community, a campaign demanding justice is reported to have gathered 4.1 million signatures. Big names in Vietnamese streaming such as Do Mixi and PewPew have also spoken out. One player is said to have cried and deleted the game in frustration. The incident has crossed beyond the boundary of a single penalty to become a talking point even for those who do not follow esports.

Notably, the backdrop of the story matters. This is not a weak esports nation. Vietnam once won its first esports medal at an ASIAD, a milestone that lifted the discipline from community ground onto the map of mainstream multi-sport competition. But alongside competitive achievements, the governance infrastructure has not kept pace. In traditional sports, there is always an independent federation that sets rules, organizes events, and handles violations. In esports, that structure barely exists. And that is the missing piece this incident has exposed to the public.

There is a comparison worth making here. In international events organized by traditional sports federations, when an athlete is penalized for doping, for instance, there is always a public process from sample collection, testing, to adjudication. Every step leaves a trace to follow. Journalists, lawyers, and even fans can look it up. In esports, most penalties appear only as a short announcement, sometimes just a few lines, and the rest of the story sinks into silence. Not because esports deliberately conceals, but because no one has built that system of traces.

The core of the issue lies in the architecture of power. Krafton is simultaneously the rule-maker, the tournament organizer, and the body that issues penalties. These three roles are merged into a single entity. In any mature justice system, letting one party write the law, run the court, and pronounce the verdict is always a recipe for suspicion. Not because that party is necessarily wrong, but because such a structure does not allow outsiders to verify. When controversy erupts, fans have no neutral body to place their trust in. They only have the publisher - the one that issued the penalty - to ask whether that penalty is fair. That is an institutional dilemma with no way out.

VTV3 did not enter the debate over the verdict's right and wrong. The question they raised is procedural: what exactly is the violation, and how was the process carried out. This is the crux many people following the case rush past. The biggest problem is not whether to punish or not. The problem is the opacity of the process. Once you keep the allegedly violated rule secret, you cannot let the public assess whether the penalty is proportionate. You also cannot prove that the process is consistent with other cases. And when the process cannot be proven, trust automatically tilts toward the punished - even when they may not be right. Transparency is not a concession granted to the punished. It is the foundation for any disciplinary system to be considered legitimate.

In this story, one detail deserves a pause: the incident is said to involve a showmatch - a type of exhibition event with lower competitive stakes than official competition. If that is true, this is a gray zone of governance. Are penalties designed for professional arenas appropriate to apply to a demonstration event? The line between a violation worth sanctioning in official competition and a small error in a friendly match is far from clear. And precisely because it is unclear, it opens the door to every interpretation. VTV3 spoke of rules needing to be clear and consistent even for a showmatch. That is a reasonable standard, but it is also an admission that lower-tier events currently sit outside a transparent governance zone. When a body of rules does not cover all situations, the enforcer will fill the gap with personal judgment. And personal judgment, however well-intentioned, cannot replace a verifiable process.

Going deeper, the esports ecosystem lacks an independent arbitration mechanism. Here a paradox exists: teams can file appeals, but those appeals will be handled by the very party that issued the penalty. Technically, this is still a feedback channel. But in principle, it is a process where the prosecutor and the adjudicator are one. There is no independent sports court, no arbitration panel of third parties, no mechanism both sides recognize. As a result, whether the appeal is granted or denied, the conclusion will always carry a stain of doubt: was it reached for genuine reasons, or for public-pressure reasons? If the penalty is upheld, the public says the publisher is rigid and conservative. If it is mitigated, the community says the publisher bowed to pressure. Both outcomes are unfavorable, and neither says anything about the truth.

Looked at broadly, this is not a disease unique to one game. Any discipline operating under a model where the publisher controls everything from rules to tournaments shares this structure. This means similar disputes are not isolated but systemic, and can recur. A controversial penalty, an opaque process, an angry community, a wave of calls for transparency - this is a loop the esports industry has gone through many times. The difference this time is scale: 4.1 million signatures is a signal that cannot be ignored. It shows the Vietnamese esports public is not only large, but also knows how to organize and speak up. A market with demanding fans is a mature market. But a market mature on the audience side is now facing a governance system still in its infancy, and that gap is precisely the source of the conflict.

But here is where I want to turn the lens back. Amid the community's anger, one important thing is forgotten: the core fact - what exactly the violation is - has not been disclosed. I am not saying the two players are guilty. I am not saying they are innocent either. I am saying we are reacting to an indictment that has not been read in full. When 4.1 million people sign their names demanding justice before knowing what happened, that is the heat of a crowd, not the conclusion of an investigation. That heat may be justified, because the opacity of the process is genuinely outrageous. But it is being mixed with a prior verdict on guilt or innocence. And those two things need to be separated before we say anything more.

Another counterintuitive point: what is being demanded is not justice for two individuals, but transparency of the mechanism. However many signatures there are, it does not change one reality - it is not evidence. One million or four million signatures does not prove which rule was violated. The only thing that can change the game is a document that clearly publishes the clause, the process, and the proportionality of the penalty. If the community directs all its energy into the signature count instead of the demand to publish the process, it will lose the chance to reform the system. Anger can subside after a few weeks. But the governance gap remains.

And here is the final paradox, perhaps the hardest to hear. Public pressure may force Krafton to disclose more. The involvement of a national broadcaster raises the reputational cost of an opaque conclusion. But if that pressure only leads to a result where the right person is punished without changing the power structure, then next time a similar incident will erupt again, again with signatures, again with tears, and again with nothing changing. Real reform does not lie in winning a case. It lies in establishing a mechanism so that such cases no longer depend on whether the publisher wants to disclose.

When VTV3 chose to stand on the side of transparency rather than judging guilt, they reframed the story - from who is right and who is wrong to how the system should operate. That is a harder question, but also the right one. After all, a penalty can be overturned, a player can be exonerated. But if no one builds an independent arbitration mechanism for esports, then the biggest question will still hang in the air: who is the final judge, and based on which rule?