Google has removed the well-known Battle Royale title Battlegrounds Mobile India and is more commonly referred to as BGMI and removed it off it’s Play Store in India after an order by the government. This comes a year after the developer Krafton released the game in response to a ban placed on its similar game PUBG within the South Asian market. The BGMI game was also removed from Apple’s App Store in India.
The Android maker confirmed the development shortly after the publication of the report. “On receiving the notification in accordance with the procedure we have established we have informed the developer who was affected and removed access to the application that was accessible through the Play Store in India,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch.
The app was removed from Google and removed from its Play Store on Thursday evening as well as Krafton has removed the application on it’s Apple App Store shortly afterwards an individual who has direct knowledge of the situation informed TechCrunch. The maker of the iPhone didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
A Krafton spokesperson confirmed the delisting and added that they were seeking clarification. The stock of Krafton plunged by more than 9 percent on Friday until a partial recovery.
The change comes in the wake of a growing conflict among India and China two nuclear-armed neighbouring nations that have been in conflict since the deadly clashes on the Himalayan border in the year 2020. India has since responded to the development by banning over 300 Chinese-linked applications, including PUBG and TikTok Both of which were able to count India as their biggest international market for users.
Of the hundreds of applications of games New Delhi has banned in the country, PUBG by Krafton was the only game that was allowed to returnbut with a completely new avatar.
Krafton stated that it had broken ties to its publisher partner Tencent who is an investor of major importance in the company. The firm also committed to investing at least $100 million in India’s gaming sector. Krafton -is a major investor in several Indian startups , including Nodwin Gaming, Loco, Pratilipi and Kuku FM in the past one and a half decadeshas reported to TechCrunch in the past week it had estimated that its investments in India will be around $140 million in the next month.
The South Korean-based company said this week that more than 100 million players have signed up to this game across India within the last one year following its launch. According Sensor Tower, Sensor Tower, Battlegrounds Mobile India had accumulated over 16.5 million active monthly users in India.
It was not clear why it was unclear why the Indian government had issued an order to stop Battlegrounds Mobile India. New Delhi has cited national security concerns in banning other applications. (Reuters announced on the following day that India is banning BGMI in section 69A under local IT laws.)
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In the last month, a local newspaper article — and whose veracity has been challenged by a number of claims that a child was responsible for killing his mother while under an influence from the sport. The report received a huge amount of attention on social media , and was even read by the country’s parliament in the month of. India’s junior IT Minister Rajeev Chendrasekhar told reporters the week before that police were conducting an investigation into the matter.
Indian police have raided office in India of Chinese phone makers Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo in the last few months and slammed them with accusations of tax fraud against the three companies. China’s Embassy in India has criticized Indian authorities earlier in the month for “frequent inquiries” into local divisions of the companies and warned that such actions “impede the improvement of the economic conditions” for businesses in India as well as “chills the trust and confidence” of other foreign enterprises to invest and work inside this South Asian nation.
Krafton has repeatedly said the fact that BGMI as well as PUBG are two different games. He claimed that the company had put in place security measures -for example, imposing limits on time for game’s use and login authentication to prevent any issues with the misuse of its titles.
“The game is very well-known and this issue comes with the game’s territory. We aren’t aware of the specifics of the fraud or the method of perpetration however these are very serious instances. We strive to provide an enjoyable and safe gaming experience for players,” Krafton’s India CEO Sean Hyunil Sohn told TechCrunch this week.
He said: “The government does not interfere in the way that apps work and which apps can’t. They are involved in digital privacy and security issues as well as BGMI adheres to all rules. MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologies) has also pointed out it is true that PUBG as well as BGMI are distinct games” the official added.
Hyunil Sohn told the media that the company is open to investing 100 million dollars or more in the Indian gaming sector this year.
