Organized by RevivalTV and presented by Moonton, the Mobile Legends Southeast Asia Cup (MSC) 2018 was held at Jakarta, Indonesia from the 27th July to 29th July. The tournament featured teams hailing from Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and of course, not forgetting Malaysia!
Throughout the three-day event, the entire Mobile Legends community tuned in, either on-ground for Indonesian fans or through livestreams for international fans, as the 10 teams competed for a chance to emerge victorious and be named the champions for MSC 2018.
However, as you may already know, drama unfolded on the first day itself, and when we thought that was already bad enough, even more controversies occurred – mainly surrounding the Malaysian team AirAsia Saiyan. To start things off, here’s the MSC Drama breakdown courtesy of Spartanic Entertainment.
After AirAsia Saiyan withdrew from MSC 2018 in protest to the organizer’s actions, they subsequently released an official statement both in Malay and English for all their fans.
The biggest question we had after reading both the breakdown and the official statement from AirAsia Saiyan was: Why in the world did RevivalTV (the organizers of MSC 2018) have two different contracts for AirAsia Saiyan and AeroWolf?
As quoted by AirAsia Saiyan in their official statement:
“The organizers explained that the Aerowolf team signed a different contract from us on July 3, 2018 during the MSC 2018 press conference. The Aerowolf contract is in Indonesian language and they also show a new competition rule book signed by Aerowolf and RevivalTV.
Thus, there are two different contracts between the teams involved with the MSC 2018 competition, and after a two-hour discussion, the proposal to solve the problem is to have a Best-of-1 match between ASYN and AERO for the semi-final slot, and if we reject the proposal, we will be disqualified from MSC 2018.
We feel this is an unjust decision as the mistake of the RevivalTV should not affect the integrity of the competition, especially when the announcement to all parties was decided at 11PM yesterday.”
As the news spread among the E-Sports community in Malaysia, even YB Syed Saddiq, the Minister of Youth and Sports was notified via a Twitter thread by Astro Awani’s journalist, Mariah Ahmad. From there, he invited the Malaysian team for a discussion and even talked about the situation as well as the further actions that will be taken by AirAsia Saiyan and the Minster of Youth and Sports during his press conference (from 14:47 onwards) on 30th July.
On the 29th July 2018, Moonton released an official statement and apology post on the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang page, stating that “we & RevivalTV take full responsibility on the mismanagement during the past 2 days”.
Meanwhile, the CEO of RevivalTV, Senz Houston published an apology post on Facebook regarding the controversy at MSC 2018.
https://www.facebook.com/senz.houston/posts/1803346533114415
So what happens next?
Needless to say, most MLBB fans are unhappy and dissatisfied with how MSC 2018 went as you can see on the comment section on posts related to the tournament. Other than the issues mentioned above, fans were also angered by other problems such as the technical issues faced by AirAsia Saiyan and Thailand team, IDONOTSLEEP that affected their results as well as constant interruptions of live match broadcast.
While we wait and see whether AirAsia Saiyan will be taking legal action against RevivalTV for the injustice that they have faced, let’s continue to support our home MLBB team as they compete in the Mobile Legends Professional League (MPL) Season 2, starting on the 10th August 2018. Wishing them all the best!
