Himass and TanVuu: How KRAFTON Built a 'Star System' Inside Vietnamese PUBG

I sat through the replay of a Southeast Asian regional qualifier, and the thing that made me hit pause was not a headshot. It was the moment at minute eighteen, with all four members alive, when Himass (La Phuong Tien Dat) — the name Vietnamese media calls the "number one shooter" — was drifting back toward the edge of the circle, alone, with a near-empty magazine. Nobody called him back. Nobody followed. The rotation stood still, buried in place.

That was the moment I realized the problem with Vietnamese PUBG is not Himass the individual. It is the system revolving around him.

At the same time, on another map, TanVuu (Tran...) — the name analysts mention far less — was doing the opposite: giving up the best position to a teammate, holding the door, turning himself into the platform that supports the whole squad. Two people, two playstyles, one system. And KRAFTON sits in the middle, allocating the light: who shines, who gets smothered.

Context: a team sport sold as a solo contest

PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS is a battle royale developed by KRAFTON, and its competitive ecosystem runs on four-player squads, scoring placement and kills. Vietnam sits in Southeast Asia, where teams fight for a PGC slot — the PUBG Global Championship, the highest-tier event KRAFTON runs each year.

What Vietnamese fans often forget: in a discipline where the whole team wins or the whole team dies, KRAFTON still sells a personalized story. Kill leaderboards, highlight reels, weekly MVP awards — all designed so you remember one name. But PUBG is not a discipline where one shooter can drag a squad through the circle. You can hold the highest headshot rate in the tournament and still die because your teammate could not hold a door.

That is exactly where the "star system" forms — not because KRAFTON orders it, but because media pressure and sponsorship needs create it. A team with a star gets more funding. More funding means better practice conditions, better bootcamps, deeper opponent analysis. But it also means every tactical resource — good positions, good loot, teammate protection — funnels toward that star.

The failure point is not aim

Based on my experience tracking hundreds of PUBG matches across Southeast Asia, I keep seeing one pattern: star-led teams win early and collapse late. The reason is concrete. When everyone is trained to "clear the path for the star," they learn dependency. They stop making their own rotation calls. They wait for a signal from the person deemed best.

In PUBG, that is a death sentence. The circle does not wait. No coach can call micro-level tactics mid-match. Four players must read the circle as one unit, or at least as two independently reading pairs. If three players only know how to follow one, that team has a single brain — and one brain cannot watch four directions at once.

I rewatched Himass's decision-making and found a worrying pattern. When forced into a one-versus-two or one-versus-three, his win rate stays above average — that is real talent. But he keeps getting pushed into those situations, and that is the real issue. A good shooter should not be in one-versus-three situations that often. If it repeats, the system is failing, not the individual.

TanVuu, the support, is actually the most critical link

This is where I want to break the consensus. Vietnamese PUBG analysts tend to rate players by K/D and kills per match. On that scale, TanVuu is unremarkable. But watching how he moves, I see something else: he is the pace-setter. He decides when the squad fights and when it folds. He checks whether teammates are in position before opening fire.

The player called "second-tier" is often the one who sees tactical holes most clearly. They have no highlight reel to protect their ego, so they observe more. On many top global PUBG teams, this role — usually the IGL or support — is the hardest to replace. You can find a new shooter in one transfer window. You cannot find a new match reader in one month.

The new meta lives where people fear losing something, not in the tactics themselves. And Vietnamese PUBG teams fear losing their star. That fear makes them play safe, pile protection onto one person, and neglect building a distributed decision-making system.

Transfer season always amplifies this trap. When a team loses a shooter, their first instinct is to find a better shooter — not a better match reader. Money flows to names with pretty kill stats, while money does not flow into building decision structures. That is why Vietnamese PUBG teams keep swapping players without improving. They change the parts but not the engine.

Release-clause structures and salary budgets are the real story behind results. They decide how many cool heads a team can keep in the practice room, and how many heads get distracted by contract anxiety.

KRAFTON benefits, but the ecosystem pays

KRAFTON, as publisher, does not directly intervene in how a Vietnamese team allocates resources. But it sets the incentive frame. Its tournaments reward kills, promote personal highlights, and build star imagery. That is sound business — stars sell tickets, skins, views. But it creates an environment where teams are incentivized to nurture an individual rather than build a system.

Here I have to be blunt: KRAFTON has no duty to develop Vietnamese esports. It has a duty to sell games. If selling stars outsells selling systems, they sell stars. The problem is that Vietnamese teams blur two goals: winning titles and building image. When those conflict, they usually pick the second.

Silence is never a win, only extra time before the collapse. And the silence of these teams under media pressure — afraid to bench a star, afraid to let a lesser-known name call tactics — is that extra time.

Where I could be wrong

I have to be honest: there is a scenario where I am completely wrong. If Himass is genuinely a world-class IGL and the squad following him is a deliberate tactical choice, then the system I call "smothering" is actually the system lifting him up. Some top global teams operate exactly that way — a superstar who shoots and calls, with the other three serving that structure.

The issue is verification. If that model works, it must show late in matches — where pressure peaks. If Himass's team consistently wins into the top four but loses in the top two, the problem is not aim. If TanVuu's team climbs into the top four through rotations nobody notices, the real value sits elsewhere. I do not have enough internal data — scrims, voice comms, contracts — to claim certainty. I only have footage and repeating patterns.

And patterns can deceive. That is why I write this as a hypothesis, not a verdict.

A thought moving forward

I do not trust head-to-head history; I trust how a team trembles at minute 85. In PUBG, minute 85 equals the sixth circle, when only eight teams remain and every wrong call costs a life. Watch Himass's team and TanVuu's team in this season's sixth circles. If they tremble the same way, the star system has not changed — no matter whose name shines on the kill board.

The question is not who is better. The question is whether KRAFTON keeps selling a one-person story, or whether the Vietnamese ecosystem learns to sell a system. That is the bet I am placing on next season.