PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Responds To Stream Sniping Ban

Just a few days ago, some brief drama swept the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds community when a player was banned for supposedly "stream sniping," an action where a player checks a streamer's channel to find their location and use that information to their advantage. After the player in question was effectively banned, sides began forming on whether or not the action was justified, and the team behind the game has now responded to give their side of the story.

"I have seen the data the community team looked at before issuing the ban, and the ban was justified," a tweet from the creative director of the game read in response to the situation. "The tracking data shows that the player in question tried to join the same lobby as their target multiple times."

If you didn't catch the situation when it initially happened and are playing catch-up to get all the details, the actual banning was reported on recently where we went into detail on what exactly stream sniping is and what the game's developers can do to prevent it from happening. The player by the name of Lotoe was banned for the offense after killing two streamers in-game who said that he was stream sniping after they were killed by him more than once. Lotoe refuted the claims, saying that he doesn't even use the streaming service Twitch, but the ban went through regardless, even though the game's developers Bluehole admitted that they couldn't be 100 percent sure that the user was stream sniping.

The full response from the game's team can be seen below in the tweet that the above quote comes from.

Regarding accusations that the @PUBATTLEGROUNDS community team falsely banned a player for stream-sniping... pic.twitter.com/zdAHF6hlUf

— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) July 29, 2017

Even after the response, plenty of readers and gamers within the replies to the tweet continued to defend not only Lotoe, but also the action of stream sniping in general, shifting the responsibility onto the streamer to make sure the actions don't happen.

Others made a valid point that more reports of stream sniping will likely be on the way from frustrating players, but for now, it looks like Lotoe is keeping his ban.