PUBG Ban

The official version of "Battlegrounds Mobile India," the Indian counterpart of PUBG Mobile, has been launched in India on July 2. PUBG Mobile was banned in India in September 2020. The official version has finally been released and can be downloaded from the Google Play store. As of July 2, 10 million people have downloaded the game on the same day.

The ban of PUBG Mobile has turned out to be a great news for the other Battle Royale games. After the ban of PUBG Mobile, there has been an increase in the downloads for similar games such as Garena Free Fire and Call of Duty by 2.1 and 1.1 million respectively. PUBG Mobile along with 118 other apps were banned earlier this month in favour of protecting the “national interest and security”.

Vishal Gondal, co-founder of the nCore games, has clarified the concurrence of PUBG ban and FAU-G announcement. he revealed, FAU-G was always in the pipeline and the team was actively working on the game since May-June 2020. He further added,"The ban on PUBG Mobile was coincidental". Gondal labeled his developers' team as "highly qualified" and "capable" to develop games as good as PUBG or any other game.

On September 3, Tencent lost USD 14 billion in market value and its share fell by 2%. The losses were seen as an effect of India's ban on PUBG on September 2. Tencent, one of China's biggest gaming company, owns the mobile version of PUBG. India is PUBG mobile's largest market with over 175 million installs. The move came as a result of the rising border tensions between India and China.