At the time of its ban, PUBG Mobile was the #1 game in India by both revenue and downloads and had been a key driver of mobile gaming growth in the country. While the PUBG IP is owned by Krafton, PUBG Mobile was developed and published in India by Chinese gaming giant Tencent. MeitY originally banned PUBG Mobile in September 2020 due to national security and data privacy issues following, though not necessarily as a result of border tensions with China. Krafton launched BGMI after PUBG Mobile was banned BGMI’s takedown comes just 5 months after the ban of Garena Free Fire, the most popular battle royale game in India until then. The bans have primarily targeted mobile apps from China, primarily citing national security risks. BGMI is the 57th game pulled due to this regulation. While the government has not issued a statement to confirm the game is permanently banned, Reuters reported that the title was pulled by MeitY using Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the same act that was used to justify the ban of 321 mobile apps since June 2020.

It’s unclear what changed to cause MeitY to pull the app. These concerns were recently raised in the Indian Parliament, with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) stating that BGMI was a different app to PUBG Mobile, suggesting it was not a national security concern. The request comes in the wake of several allegations made against the game for being a rebranded version of PUBG Mobile, which was banned in September 2020 due to national security concerns. Our research shows that the popular battle royale game, published by South Korean firm Krafton, is no longer available for download. The Indian government requested Apple and Google to remove Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) from their app stores on July 28th, one year after it launched in the country.

Download h1 battle royale for free