 |
| The removal of the game has been officially ordered by the government, according to Google. |
Following the ban on PUBG Mobile in India, the South Korean game developer Krafton returned to the Indian market a year later with a relaunch of the same title under the moniker Battlegrounds Mobile India, or BGMI. However, it appears that BGMI has also been outlawed in India.
The BGMI game has been confirmed to have been deleted from both the Google Play store and the Apple App store, despite the fact that the IT ministry has not yet made an official announcement. The removal of BGMI from the Google Play store and the App store was explained by Krafton, who also confirmed the news, adding, "We will let you know whenever we have specific information.
If you already have the game installed on your smartphone, you can continue to play it until it is again possible to play it even though it has been taken down from app stores.
Google has confirmed that it has a formal order from the government to take the game down. The statement read: "Upon receiving the ruling, in accordance with established procedure, we have contacted the concerned developer and have disabled access to the software that remained on the Play Store in India.
Just over a year after it was relaunched as BGMI following the government's ban on the famous battle royale game PUBG Mobile, Battlegrounds Mobile India, the game's Indian adaptation, recently reached 100 million registered users in the nation.
The Chinese gaming app BGMI-PUBG was not included in the list of 54 Chinese applications that were prohibited on February 14, 2022, according to PRAHAR, an NGO, which encouraged the government to add it to the list and block it. This was cited as a "obvious error in judgement on the side of the Government."
IANS reported that the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which is linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has backed Prahar's move and called for an investigation into the origins and Chinese involvement of BGMI-PUBG.