Steven R. August 3, 2019
An important PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tournament was the site of a massive controversy.
A local power outage in Bangkok, Thailand impacted the MET Asia Series: PUBG Classic. The surge sparked a series of events that saw a number of teams walk out of the event, prompting larger action from the PUBG Corp.
On day two of the event, a power outage occurred during the twelfth match. At that point, just 11 players from a total of six teams were remaining. Players were unable to reconnect to the game once power was restored, which left the session unrecoverable. As a result, the administrators overseeing the event threw out the results of the game, and called on teams to play a rematch.
PUBG Corp. later stepped in and amended the referee’s call. Though the results of the rematch stood, the surviving teams also received compensation points. According to Esports Insider, this came after PUBG Corp. discussed other options with teams, ultimately ignoring their wishes. This frustrated several teams, and when day three was marred further by scoring errors, the representatives of China and Taiwan all opted to walk out of the event.
As a result of the walkout, the schedule was reduced from 18 to 15 games. Korea’s Gen.G took first place and the $130,000 paycheck that came with it, but missed out on the more important prize.
In addition to the cash prize, the winning team was also supposed to earn an additional slot to the PUBG Global Championship for their league. As a result of the controversy, PUBG Corp. removed the additional Global Championship slot reward. It is unclear what will happen with the wildcard berth.
The MET Asia Series was meant to serve as the finals for splits in Taiwan’s PUBG Master League, China’s PUBG Champions League, South Korea’s PUBG Korea League 2019, and the PUBG Southeast Asia Championship. The full ruling can be found on PUBG's website.
Per Esports Insider, PUBG Corp. has been blaming the issues on tournament organizer Mineski. Regardless, having tournament-changing technical issues at one of the largest events of the year for some of the game’s biggest markets leaves egg on the company’s face.