During a livestream yesterday Twitch streamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek stated that he received a one month ban from PUBG following an incident where he played alongside a hacker.
The ban comes on the heels of lengthy community speculation as to whether or not the game’s developers would actually discipline one of their game’s most popular streamers.
The discussions began yesterday after clips showing Grzesiek cooperating with a hacker circulated on social media.
In the clips, he rides in the hacker’s flying car and exits to kill a player hidden inside a building. That player’s location was relayed to him by the hacker, presumably using cheats.
When the hacker mentioned selling cheats for a living, Grzesiek quickly silenced them. Hacking is a bannable offence in PUBG, as is cooperation with players outside your squad.
“I was trying to have a good time,” Grzesiek said on stream. “Obviously, I knew what the fuck I was doing, which wasn’t a great idea. It seemed like a great idea, but it wasn’t a great idea. I’m sorry to those peeps who are real upset with me, with all the, y’know, flying around with the cheater and such…”
Grzesiek went on to say that he had been banned for a month.
During this stream, the ban appears to go into effect after Grzesiek joins a PUBG match in progress. Then, his gameplay gets cut off, after which point he gets placed at 53rd out of 100 players. He shuts down PUBG and moves on to Rainbow Six: Siege.
Kotaku reached out to Grzesiek but did not receive comment in time for publication. Grzesiek later logged back into PUBG and purchased ranks in the game’s Sanhok event pass, but did not appear to attempt to play a match.
When reached by Kotaku to clarify whether Grzesiek was banned and why, a representative of PUBG Corporation gave the following statement: “We do not publicly disclose/discuss individual player penalties. We encourage all players to refer to our posted PUBG Rules of Conduct, here.”
Before Grzesiek’s ban, several fans had voiced their anger at seeing him team up with a hacker. Others blamed PUBG Corporation for its inability to ban hackers. Still others speculated that Grzesiek’s clout would protect him from punishment.
However, there is precedent for this punishment. In July last year, popular Twitch streamer Dr Disrespect received a temporary suspension after teamkilling during a livestream.
Grzesiek’s ban lends credence to a statement from designer Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene: “In my house, you follow the rules or you GTFO.”
Comments
6 responses to “Top PUBG Streamer Says He Was Banned After Playing With Hacker”
Seems fair to me. If you intentionally benefit from someone else hacking the game and don’t outright put a stop to it, you don’t deserve to get off scot-free, especially as someone with so many eyes on you.
Yeah the story is lacking some context – it wasn’t a one off, the guy was stream sniping him – From the stream:Apathy seems like the best response in that situation, I’m not sure what else he could have done other than just stop playing.
Hmm, not the first story recently to miss some vital information that changes how the story comes across to the reader.
Good researching.
You dare suggest that a Kotaku author left out facts relevant to the story?
Quickly moderators, delete his comment post haste!
I’m kinda on the fence about this. He did take advantage of the situation and ruined that game for another player, but yeah the real offender should have been axed a lot quicker, I wouldn’t be surprised is the hacker is still flying cars around in the game.
I do note that at the end of the video he said that was the best time he’s ever had in pubg! Which is interesting. Hard to tell is this was a dig at the developers or just the irony of the whole situation.
$10 says his ban gets a ‘review’ and found to be ‘in error’ or ‘too harsh’ when someone is like “Hey, that guy with the average what 12k+ viewers a stream isn’t playing PUBG on Twitch right now…”
Shroud is still streaming pubg today..