After almost 200 million downloads nationwide, India has decided to ban PUBG Mobile - the country's most successful app on the market in terms of both downloads and revenue - alongside 117 other Chinese mobile apps.
The news comes from Twitter, where games industry analyst for China and Asia Daniel Ahmad shared details of the ban. According to Ahmad, popular mobile title Rise of Kingdoms was also banned, as were a variety of other prominent games.
You can check out the tweet from Ahmad below.
As Ahmad notes, this is as big as the TikTok ban India introduced back in June. He also mentions in a subsequent tweet that on top of being the highest-grossing title of all time in the country, PUBG Mobile was in the process of fostering a relatively healthy esports and streaming scene - something that Indian company Patym was actively attempting to accomplish earlier this year.
"India's government cited national security issues as the reason for the ban," Ahmad wrote on Twitter. "This comes after tensions between the two countries has risen recently, leading to clashes on the border
"This is a way to retaliate against China, despite apps being compliant and storing data correctly," he added.
Ahmad also points out that although PUBG is technically a Korean IP, the mobile version is both developed and published by Chinese company Tencent. In fact, a sizable portion of the list of recently banned apps can be traced back to corporate giants such as Tencent and NetEase, including a range of other popular games like Arena of Valor and Knives Out.
The list is not exclusive to games though - even apps such as AliPay, which is designed for everyday use, are included.
At present, it is unclear whether or not the ban will be reversed. As it stands, PUBG Mobile cannot be downloaded in India, alongside all 117 of the apps that were banned alongside it. As Ahmad noted on Twitter, this is a pretty huge blow to the games industry.