The six Chinese teams planning to attend the 2021 PUBG Global Championship (PGC 2021) are facing a “high probability” of having to play the event remotely according to sources familiar to the situation and The Game Haus.
Since the original report that Krafton and PUBG Corp plan on holding PGC 2021 fully on LAN, the situation surrounding the Chinese teams has unraveled. Over the past few weeks, talk circulated about potential travel issues surrounding the Chinese teams. While sources familiar with the situation are calling the source of the trouble “visa issues”, one did state another theory of why this could be. They stated that it could very well “be based on quarantine policies” and that the scenario could potentially change any day now.
One source posited the situation arose from PUBG’s complicated relationship with the Chinese game regulators. Given that PUBG was a main target for the regulators, they suggested that the Chinese government could be giving them a tough time considering the nature of their relationship to the game. Recently, the PUBG Champions League’s account was unverified on Weibo in addition to the Chinese government’s continued targeted removal of the game on streaming platforms. Sources do expect an announcement to be made sometime in the next week surrounding PGC and some of the issues that have arisen in the past few weeks.
If the Chinese teams were not able to attend PGC in person, it would be a massive blow. The 2021 PUBG Global Championship was set to be the first event in almost two years that had every team on LAN. With those plans appearing to fall through, the event has lost some of its power. There’s no lack of pros who commented on PGI.S’s LAN/Online hybrid structure.
Additionally, given the situation surrounding the Chinese scene, this would be a potentially sad ending for their scene. With all of the issues surrounding PUBG in China currently, PGC this was going to be a potentially fitting send-off. Instead, if the Chinese teams do play remotely, it is a potentially sad ending for a region with such a large place in PUBG history.
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