The group stage sent six squads per group to the Grand Finals and placed slots seven to fourteen in the Survival Stage. The bottom two places in each group were eliminated. 4Thrives took the last of those two places in Group B, so the champions will play neither of the later stages. Team NEXT, 15th on the same 11 points, went out with them.
The same cut hit Sharper Esports and Hustler Crew in the other group table.
Where the points went
PUBG Mobile standings are built from two currencies, elimination points and placement points. 4Thrives collected little of either. They finished the six matches with 8 eliminations and 3 placement points and no WWCD (winner winner chicken dinner, a first-place finish in a match).
That last detail matters in this group. Every one of the six squads that qualified for the Grand Finals won at least one match, and no team outside the top six did. Wolves Esports topped the group, with Vampire Esports, Ulf Esports, The MongolZ, Regnum Carya Esports and BUF Esports behind them. A single chicken dinner did not guarantee qualification, but in this group every qualifier had one.
The standings placed 4Thrives behind Team NEXT despite the equal points total. The two squads reached 11 by different routes, with Team NEXT ahead on placement points and 4Thrives ahead on eliminations.
| Pos | Squad | WWCD | Elims | Place | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | 18 Esports | — | 13 | 5 | 18 |
| 14 | Alter Ego Ares | — | 13 | 1 | 14 |
| 15 | Team NEXT | — | 6 | 5 | 11 |
| 16 | 4Thrives Esports | — | 8 | 3 | 11 |
The bottom of the table shows how thin the margin was at the Survival Stage line. Alter Ego Ares held 14th, the last Survival Stage slot, only three points above 4Thrives. A single mid-table placement across six matches would have been enough to change the outcome. Even that would have left the champions far from the top six, because the gap to sixth-placed BUF Esports was 37 points.
The elimination count tells a similar story. 4Thrives' 8 eliminations were the second-lowest in Group B, ahead of only Team NEXT. At the other end, Vampire Esports led the group with 45 eliminations, and Wolves Esports reached the top of the table by combining 40 eliminations with the group's best placement total. Teams that scored on both sides of the sheet climbed. 4Thrives did neither often enough.
The form column in the standings lists 2, 5, 1, 1 and 0 for the champions. If it reads as per-match points, that means one strong match and the rest at two points or fewer. A defending team needed a deeper run of results to stay in the event.
Fans offer three explanations
Reaction on the livestream split into three camps, none of them backed by evidence in the material. Some fans linked the exit to the squad's meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, calling it bad luck. Others pointed to 4Thrives wearing blue jerseys for the first time. A third group argued it was simply a poor day for the defending champions.
These are community theories, not findings. The group table gives a plainer picture: low placement points, a middling elimination total and no match win across six games. The jersey and the meeting are what fans reached for, and nothing in the standings supports either.
The group stage also ends the season for 4Thrives in a different way than for most teams below them. Everyone from seventh to fourteenth moves on to the Survival Stage, including the squads that finished with less than a third of the leaders' points. The champions did not make that list, and they finished three points short of it.
