I've noticed the last couple of days while playing on ACR, that there will come certain situations where some players will skip their big blind, and go straight to a small blind. Where it tends to happen is when the player who was previously the BB gets eliminated from the tournament. In that case, person to that players left *should* be the BB and there should be no small blind. But I've seen it happen a few times now where the person who was UTG in the prior hand ends up SB and the person who was UTG+1 ends up BB. The end result being that the person who should have been BB is SB and skipped paying the BB.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes.

happens a lot. more of late

Yeah... silly players going broke in the BB what's up with that?

That's happened to me a few times when I've used the 'sit out next BB at all tables' button. When the next BB comes around, I don't need to pay for that BB or any other from that point on as the game continues anyway. When I've seen that happen I didn't play any hands so as not to get in trouble but I've watched the BB go around as many as 4 times, rake free, before me closing the table.

It might be that the UTG player in the scenario that the OP presented may have actually have pressed the 'sit out next BB' button.