PUBG Team Loses $12,000 Over Glitch Exploit

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds team OpTic Gaming has had its second-place tournament finish revoked after tourney officials deduced that one of its players abused a glitch that enabled him to see through walls for an unfair advantage.

As a result of the game eight disqualification, OpTic Gaming fell three places in standings, from second to fifth. And in the process of dropping to fifth they went from $12,000 in earnings to nothing.

The player involved in the incident was Ian "Bahawaka" Crowe, who during game eight of the PUBG Invitational at IEM Katowice maneuvered along a wall in a specific fashion, which turned the wall transparent. Citing point 5.6 of its rulebook, IEM officials noted that intentionally changing your character's angle to look through an object is prohibited. Interestingly, the rule notes that this is indeed a known, yet unpatched, glitch, however, it is not the intended boundaries of the game, and thus exploiting isn't allowed.

Following the controversy, Bahawaka took to Reddit to defend himself

"We were playing with ear buds and noise cancelling headphones on top. This leads to poor nose quality. I hopped the corner to get as close as physically possible to their car rotation to track its movement. If you watched the match live or are familiar with the terrain, there's no benefit to having vision of that hill during that scenario."

In addition to some less than kind tweets thrown his way, many people came to Bahawaka's defense.

honestly.. I feel bad for you @BaHaWaKa and the guys from Optic, u played insanely well and absolutely deserved being on top at IEM regardless of using the glitch intentionally or not. imo. Wish u best of luck, that was hell of a rivalry.

— Drainys (@drainyspubg) March 10, 2018

I'm really not convinced this was intentional. It's also unfortunate that the entire team loses everything. If you think bahawaka cheated then punish him but the punishment doesn't fit the crime (if there was one) in this situation. https://t.co/58MdXlL3R5

— Brax (@BraxCMG) March 10, 2018

Meanwhile, Team Liquid player Scoom also took to Twitter where he demonstrated what Bahawaka's did, saying it is something that is "kinda hard to do accidentally," because it requires a specific procedure of certain movements and weapon holstering.

No matter where you, or anyone specific person, comes down on the incident, what ultimately matters in the case is what the tourney officials thought: and they ruled Bahawaka's actions as against the rules.

Source: Kotaku