The Korean Warcraft 3 player, Jeon “So.in” Jin-Hwan has received a penalty in a Blizzard authorized and Netease hosted Warcraft 3 tournament, the Golden Championship Series. He was penalized due to his “passive” playstyle, which the host, NetEase believed that it could be a sign of being part in some misconduct. However, according to So.In, there were no concrete evidence towards the penalization.

So.in lost against a Chinese Human user named ‘Romantic’ in the Warcraft 3 Golden Championship Series 2018 Summer Season, May Qualifier Group D Losers’ Finals; So.in and Romantic received a penalty after the match.

According to So.in, “After the match, Blizzard reached out to me and notified me that I took part in some misconduct. They said that the match will be cancelled and that they will give additional information about my penalty. I did not know the reason for it. They did not tell me why I received it.”

The two players’ penalty turned out to be Romantic receiving a ban until May 31st 2019 and So.in receiving an full withdrawal of his May Golden League points.

So.in added, “My performance isn’t that steady. I’ve seen my replays and I did make a lot of mistakes. I underperformed. But still, it is really an ironic situation; I’m not sure whether the host overestimated me or I was simply that bad. I didn’t imagine [my underperformance would be] misunderstood as misconduct.”

Meanwhile, fans suspect that Romantic received a 1 year ban due to an illegal act such as match fixing. Some seem to believe that the host decided to penalize So.in’s rather passive play because they thought it had something to do with Romantic’s illegal actions. Although this is just speculation, people are starting to stand up against the host's seemingly groundless decision. If they don’t give out a more detailed reasoning for their penalty, the fans’ complaints won’t be stopping any time soon.