The fallout of Korean PUBG Esports scene

It’s hard for me to say this, but PCS6 Asia symbolizes for me the official end of the South Korean Empire in PUBG Esports. Don’t get me wrong, this empire has been dying for a while — over the past two years, the KR scene has been desperately trying to retain their old glory while slowly recognizing that they’re no longer the powerhouse that have clean swept every global event they attended in 2019 except of PNC, usually by having 2 or 3 teams in the top six.

But where did everything go so wrong? How did a country that is both the home to the PUBG and an eternal powerhouse on the esports scene get in such a downfall?

For that, we need to look back to the end of 2019 — At this point, the Korean scene was at it’s arguable peak, with Gen.G taking that year’s Global Championship, 4 of 6 KR teams at the event making it to top 12 in Oakland and a heavily stacked lobby in their region thanks to the 24-team PUBG Korea League organized directly by Krafton with support of AfreecaTV and OGN. However, the executives at the top of PUBG Corp. had a rough decision they had to make regarding their esports project at that time. Just a year after introducing the Pro League systems into all regions of the esports scene, it was clear that PUBG was not in a place to become a somewhat self-sustainable esports and that Krafton needed to make a long-term change before it was that late. With that in mind, they decided to cut their multi-million dollar losses and they’ve decided to shut down the Regional Pro Leagues in most of the regions, including South Korea.

Right there, as much as this looked to be a good short-term decision for Krafton to cut their losses and to shift into a more global-event focused esports system, they put the first nails in the coffin for South Korea in the process.

First off, the closing of PKL has significantly cut the pathway for players and orgs to develop themselves in the long-term, especially for the teams in the lower tier of the regional scene pyramid. Suddenly the players that might’ve got a chance to play 48 tournament matches per phase, either in PKL or its lower division in Korea Challengers, got one chance per phase to qualify to the PGS/ PCS Qualifiers, with a limited number of slots due to pro teams being directly invited. Additionally, shortening the qualifiers themselves to a 2-week, 30-match format also affected the pro players already on the scene, as they’ll all have less competitive matches to play against the region’s best and further develop their skills against one another before facing China in the Continental Series events. Other than PCS and it’s qualifiers, teams were left to either play in lower-funded secondary events like Battlegrounds Weekly Series, OGN Supermatch and Battlegrounds Smash Cup, often in a format very different from the usual SUPER ruleset.

Much more noticeably, in the same plan for 2020 Krafton have significantly cut their funding for the Korean scene, severely impacting the scene in the long-term. Most notably, the per-event prize money was cut in half in comparison from 200,000,000 KRW (around 180,000 USD) that were given out during each split of PKL, to abolish the minimum salary per player rule that was enforced to all pro teams during the PKL days and to cut the 15,000,000 KRW (~12,000 USD) per phase funding that every pro team received during PKL to cover some of their expenses. This affected both the organizations, which with no financial cushion from Krafton in their bank had to afford their PUBG divisions costs on their own through salaries or cuts from prize money — putting a bigger emphasis on them having to qualify to PCS/ PGI/ PGC to try and cover their losses — and players, which due to orgs often cutting their costs due to lesser revenue, had to get used to pay cuts and fighting for good results to build their brand and get a share of prize money, with a lot of them deciding to look for the other options.

A mix of a smaller competitive schedule, financial hits that teams and players have seen from the closing of PKL and something that no one could’ve predicted in a pandemic have created another major problem for the Korean scene — a shortage of new talent to build the competitive upper mid-tier teams.

Think of some of the teams that we had back in the PKL days — like T1, Element Mystic, MVP, Griffin/ Kongdoo, Detonator, Team Square, World Class, Quadro, VSG, Lavega, OP.GG, Prince. Only the latter three are still remaining on the PUBG scene.

And here’s the sample of players that have played in PKL Phase 3 and have retired since: Style, Shadow, Aqua5, Hansia, R0wha, EJ, Hulk, Daengchae, DG98, Temeria (currently a coach), kAyle, Doya, Yeowook, Minsung, LeClo (currently a coach), Juwon, Esther, Chelator (currently a coach), Taemin, Pio, Treasure, Joy, Mick9y, Raeng, Alphaca, 2heart, 2tap (currently a coach), OhjungJe

And that list excludes the lesser known talents, players that have moved to Japan (ex. Starlord, Indigo, Corn, Americano) or retired beforehand (likes of EscA, Benz, Simsn, Jayden, Rozar, Merald, Curious) or that are still playing in PWS Qualifiers in minor teams (hi K1nch, CENTRE and BeaN).

Krafton did make small steps forward by reviving the lower division in form of partnership with LVUP Showdown and allowing the players aged 15–18 to play in the PWS and LVUP Showdown, but with only a few teams investing in the development of youth talent (Danawa, OP.GG, Damwon, Ghibli) and Valorant entering the FPS scene and taking a large share of FPS talents to their side, the skill level in KR PUBG stagnated, if not got worse since PKL ended. There are diamonds on the scene that arrived in the last two years — the likes of EEND, Salute, Rex, Gyumin, Heaven and SeungYong, but they can’t fill the player void alone and it’ll take a lot of time, trial and error for teams to develop more of players like them for long-term improvement.

There’s however one more major thing that stands in the way of KR PUBG scene, and it’s a monster created by Krafton — it’s name is PUBG Weekly Series East Asia.

Somehow, Krafton decided to take two things that affected the Korean scene a lot in 2020 — weakening mid-tier teams and smaller financial funding — and decided to add the fuel to a dumpster fire anyway by having the top KR teams face off against the teams from Japan and Chinese Taipei, two significantly weaker regions than Korea, and put most of the 200M KRW prize pool towards the top of the field (which would’ve make some money anyway due to their status as top team in region towards sponsors or through advancement to PCS and being paid there), which can again expand the distance from haves and have nots.

And it’s not only South Korea that’s losing since the creation of PWS — in fact, the biggest loser here is Japan which lost a well-liked and developing league in Japan Series to make space for the top JP teams to get annihilated on a regular basis by the Koreans. Add a number of top and most-known talent leaving the scene since PWS was created (Dep, Kendesu, Machao, SSeeS, CiNVe, gabha just to name a few), PUBG as a game not doing as well in Japan and before and you’ll see how PUBG Esports went from biggest FPS and one of top esports in the Land of Rising Sun just two years back to a third fiddle when it comes to FPS esports in the country, miles behind Valorant and Apex Legends.

Now, is the Korean PUBG scene dead in the water? I think not, we’ll still have a batch of orgs interested and ready to invest in the region like Gen.G, Freecs, Damwon, Ghibli, Danawa and OP.GG and a few of smaller teams where the experienced journeymen and younger talents get a chance at a PCS, and there’s a lot of top talent left that will allow the top KR teams to compete with the rest of the world for at least a while. But, as much as their league has their own cloud of doubt due to Chinese law regulations, China has overtaken Korea in PUBG Esports and left them behind in a cloud of dust. And though there are ways to improve the ecosystem in Korea, mainly by improving the development conditions for newer talents, fixing the prize money of tournaments to support the teams below the top 5–6, revamping the format of PWS and/or adding an additional tournament/-s beyond PWS, BSC and LVUP Showdown, adding the in-game team skins or add-ons to allow community to financially support them in PUBG store once PCS/ PGC is over, it’s easier said than done and it’ll take Krafton to take a few bold measures to improve the Koream scene, potentially yet again at cost of Japan and Taipei scenes (example — changing PWS into KR-only league will likely severly impact their regional circuits, which don’t really exist as they were incorporated into PWS in first place).