PUBG Mobile is finally returning to India, eight months after it and more than 100 other mobile apps connected to China were banned.
PUBG Mobile developer Krafton has announced the game is finally set to return to India. The title was part of new restrictions introduced by the Indian government which eventually resulted in it and 117 other apps with links to China being banned. A particularly bitter pill to swallow for Krafton and fans of PUBG Mobile in India as with 200 million downloads, it was the most popular game in the country.
Krafton has had to jump through a number of hoops over the course of the past eight months to reach this point. That includes a rebrand for the game when it relaunches in India. PUBG Mobile will be renamed Battlegrounds Mobile India and the title sports the three colors of the Indian flag.
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Even though Krafton is a South Korean studio, Chinese company Tencent handles the mobile version of PUBG. In order to appease the Indian government and allow for the game to return to the country, Battlegrounds Mobile India will have no connection to Tencent. It has also invested $100 million into India's mobile gaming ecosystem on the path to PUBG Mobile's re-release on the subcontinent. There will be a pre-registration for Battlegrounds Mobile India, but no release date has been announced.
While Krafton is busy trying to break back into India, pretty much every other major developer and publisher is trying to appeal to the Chinese market. The country's government is notoriously hard to please when it comes to video games. While Fortnite has launched in China, it is a completely different version to the game the rest of the world plays. The Switch also continues to grow in popularity, but at launch, only one game, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, had been approved for sale by Chinese officials.
PUBG Mobile had 50 million active users in India alone when it was banned last year. Even with the game banned, 10 million of those players managed to continue enjoying PUBG Mobile through various workarounds. Those people will no longer have to bend over backwards to play PUBG Mobile, or Battlegrounds Mobile India, and Krafton will be hoping they are rejoined by the 40 million others who were previously left in the dark.
Source: TechCrunch