Ringing: How Account Sharing Can Ruin Your Esports Career

Throughout many years of esports history, tournament organizers worked hard to ensure a fair environment for all players to compete. One of those who threaten the fairness of a tournament is an act called “ringing.”

Ringing is an act of bringing an unrelated person to a team to play as one of their members. Simply put, they are sharing one of the player’s accounts so it can be played by someone else.

This person, called “ringer,” is usually someone with a high skill advantage. Their identity is unknown to the other teams and the tournament organizer. Ringers are definitely not a registered team member.

Account sharing in esports, especially inside a competitive tournament environment, is generally frowned upon, as it damages the integrity and fairness of a tournament.

There are a lot of cases of ringing in any esports tournament, but in this opportunity we will discuss two incidents with varying degrees of ringing violations. If you think this act could only be done in online tournaments, read along and you might change your mind.

tns latansa disqualified from 2026 pmnc id spring after hiring two ringers

Our first case goes to TNS Latansa, a PUBG Mobile team that got disqualified from the 2026 PMNC ID Spring. According to PUBG Mobile Esports’ official account, the incident occurred during the open qualifier stage, on group 3 phase 3.

Based on the organizer’s investigation, TNS Latansa has been proven to hire two ringers. Initially, they only caught one, while the other ringer was discovered after further investigation.

Ringer Darren Christopher Kaunang (Keynn18) has been proven to participate in the tournament under the registered account of Bagas Djohan (2ez4Cyborgg).

Another ringer, a streamer named Gusti Putra Randhika (SuperEl), got caught using the registered account of Gusti Reza Pradita (xAnomalizZ) to play in the tournament.

Due to this violation, the organizer has disqualified TNS Latansa from the tournament. Also, the four parties involved in the ringing incident have been slapped with a 3-year ban from every official PUBG Mobile tournament.

“Playing using another player’s account or gamertag, as well as asking or persuading another party to play using an account or gamertag that is not theirs, is a prohibited act,” said PUBG Mobile officials, citing their PUBG Mobile Global Rulebook.

“This decision is final and binding, in line with our commitment to maintaining fair play, competitive integrity, and professionalism within the PUBG Mobile esports ecosystem,” they continued.

The announcement drew reactions from many people, including fans and Indonesian PUBG Mobile public figures alike. Many of them are bewildered that there are still people who practice ringing.

“Don’t copy this; it would be better to save your youthful ambitions until you reach the legal age to compete,” said Bigetron by Vitality player Ryzen in an Instagram story, presumably to SuperEl.

It’s worth adding as context that SuperEl is a very young PUBG Mobile player. He started playing PUBG Mobile as early as 9 years old. That was about 4-5 years ago according to his YouTube account, so now he’s probably around 13-14 years old. More mature, but still juvenile.

We don’t know how SuperEl’s ban will be enforced. Will his ban be over when he has reached legal age, or will it start when he reaches that age?

In any case, an incident like this will end up disastrously for everyone involved. Kids like SuperEl, who has a potentially bright future in this scene, ended up being screwed just because he’s playing in a tournament before reaching legal age.

And of course, it hits hard for TNS Latansa players who fought fairly, because their chances to qualify for the 2026 PMPL ID Spring have been squandered.

Thailand ringer got caught at the 2025 SEA Games Esports

Another ringing scandal happened back in 2025. This one made big news as it happened during the esports event of the 2025 SEA Games in Bangkok, Thailand.

Naphat Warasin (Tokyogurl) was representing the Thailand national team for the Arena of Valor (international version of Honor of Kings) category. She is considered one of the best carry players in Thailand.

On December 15, during the Winner Bracket Final against Vietnam, SEA Games officials observed Tokyogurl acting in a suspicious manner.

The official observed that Tokyogurl’s fingers do not match the movement of her character on screen. Tokyogurl also got caught by the player’s camera making an obscene hand gesture.

Thailand eventually lost to Vietnam 3-0, but it doesn’t stop the official investigation on Tokyogurl. Later, it was discovered that Tokyogurl used a screen-sharing application on an official SEA Games device to stream someone else playing on her account.

The trick works like this: Tokyogurl is present with her team at the SEA Games venue, while the ringer is standing by at a different location with her registered account.

When it was time for her team to play, Tokyogurl installed the screen-sharing application without the officials’ approval. The ringer then streamed their gameplay to Tokyogurl’s phone, and she only needed to match her finger movements to the screen.

It is a whole new level of ringing because it was done in real time, inside an offline, controlled environment. This really shows to what extent someone is willing to cheat just to achieve victory.

After the discovery, the esports technical committee officially disqualified Tokyogurl from the competition.

“Naphat Warasin has violated rule 9.4.3 by installing unauthorized software or hardware and must be disqualified from SEA Games competition,” officials wrote in their report.

This announcement is also followed by Thailand’s resignation from the Arena of Valor category. Talon Esports, the team that employed Tokyogurl, also dropped her from the roster. As the nail in the coffin, Garena has issued a lifetime ban from all Arena of Valor tournaments.

“Please forgive our team for this mistake. My team and I deeply regret this,” said Santi Lothong, Thailand Esports Federation president, during a Facebook Live on his account. “We love esports and cannot tolerate actions that tarnish its reputation, no matter who the perpetrator is.”

Speaking after the incident, Tokyogurl denied all wrongdoings and insisted that she played by herself. She explained that she became nervous, and that led to her hospitalization.

“Had I cheated in the competition, I should have won. Frankly, how could I cheat?” she said on her Facebook account. Said account was deactivated not long after that.

Despite the defense, her teammates actually have noticed that Tokyogurl might have been cheating. But due to lack of evidence and Tokyogurl’s protest, the accusation was dropped. Nevertheless, the revelation has caused heartbreak among her teammates.

“We had no idea about the alleged cheating. Our hearts were shattered, and we would like to apologize to the people for the incident,” said team captain Jomkhon Pumsinil (Givemeakiss) during an interview.

Later, a confession from an Arena of Valor professional player named Chaiyo (Cheerio, also known as Kong) revealed that he is the ringer for Tokyogurl. On January 2, 2026, he posted on his TikTok account, admitting his involvement in the ringing incident.

Police involvement leads to potential imprisonment

The incident then escalated further when Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), through the Crime Suppression Division (CSD), raided three locations and arrested both Tokyogurl and Cheerio on February 13.

CIB argued that the ringing incident caused by Tokyogurl and Cheerio also constitutes a criminal offense of “colluding to knowingly circumvent computer system access controls set by others and unlawfully disclose such information in a way likely to cause damage to others and unauthorized access to protected computer data where access controls are not intended for them.”

Under the Computer Crime Act of Thailand, both of them are to be punished by up to two years imprisonment and fines up to 4,000 baht, or both. Tokyogurl and Cheerio are scheduled to appear in court on March 17.

Later on February 15, the Thai Esports Association also confirmed that both Tokyogurl and Cheerio have been banned for life from participating in all association-related competitions.

Appearing in a press conference on February 13, Santi Lothong did not hide his disappointment on how the incident developed. He expressed that he is not proud of what Tokyogurl and Cheerio did, adding that victory achieved by cheating has no pride in it.

“The incident shows that athletes were not only practicing for competition but also for cheating, which is outside our training standards. Anyone attempting such misconduct is not truly playing the game. When you act correctly, you are officially respected; when you act wrongly, you must accept serious consequences,” Santi explained.

Santi also added that during the investigation, Cheerio has been cooperative with the police, a gesture in line with his January confession. Tokyogurl also defended her stance but finally confessed to her involvement after an overwhelming amount of evidence was presented.

The police have also published a detailed confession from Cheerio about the timeline of his and Tokyogurl’s cheating scandal.

“Since the qualifiers, I have been playing for her. We practiced through Discord, screen-sharing for her. I got the ID on the 14th (January), earlier than others. I logged in first because if I didn’t, she would change the password, and I wouldn’t be able to access it,” he said.

“On the day of the match against Vietnam, the game was on. Against Timor, she wanted to play herself. On the 15th, I logged in and shared the screen. The device had some issues; the team came to check. They said someone logged in, so she changed the password. When accessing the game page and sharing the screen, I got kicked out. She played herself then.”

“Around 5 p.m., she got the new password. I asked if I should wait to log in, so I waited as told, shared the screen, and waited for the room number to be created. I was on Discord but waited too long, and she left Discord. I thought she might get caught, so I exited the game and Discord because if I didn’t, it would cause overlapping issues and ID problems. So I let her continue playing. I think she got caught, so she played all matches herself.”

Regarding the motive behind the incident, Cheerio explained that he has financial problems in his life, and by helping Tokyogurl he is able to rectify these problems.

“I have been with her a long time. When I moved to live alone, I basically helped boost her rank. She assigned me the work; she owns the page. When I had family issues and had to live alone, needing money, she took care of me from a distance. When I moved, she helped buy things for my room, and helped with room rent and food costs when I had none. My savings were running out. She started TikTok from my gameplay, helped create the profile, and supported me, so I kept playing for her.”

Cheerio also added that he was promised a brand-new iPhone smarphone if he’s able to achieve gold medal for the team. If the objective failed, the reward would be scaled down but still enough to cover for his rent and fuel.

Key Takeaway

There are motives behind the act of ringing, ranging from financial need, skirting tournament regulations, and many more.

Methods of executing a ringing also varies, from lending a registered account to someone else, to a more sophisticated ones like screen sharing.

Regardless the motive and method, the act of ringing is seen as damaging the integrity of a tournament, because the team and or its players decided to not play in a truthful manner.

It also proven that ringing could cause competitive disadvantage, especially in rookie/grassroots tournament where the ringer is a seasoned player.

Just like any other cheating incidents, ringing is also harmful for people who engaged in such act. Based on its severity, it could spell a career-ending punishment when caught.

Let the cases above be a reminder that people can and will cheat, if they’re willing to do it and if a chances to do so are present.

If you suspect that someone from your team or opponent is a ringer, don’t feel hesitate to report it to people who are responsible for this matter. A small act of care can help ensuring our esports scene stay fair and square.