Software
PUBG Mobile Can Remain Banned In India Despite Tencent License Retreat
India is unlikely to revoke a ban on the mobile edition of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) following PUBG Corp's decision to withdraw the country's mobile game publishing rights from China's Tencent, a senior government official said on Friday.
PUBG Mobile, a popular online multiplayer combat game, was one of 118 Chinese-origin apps banned by New Delhi earlier this month.
That led PUBG Corp, the South Korean company behind the game, to announce that it would no longer grant Tencent Games the right to publish the game in India. It also said it was finding ways to bring gaming experiences to Indian users in the future.
However, the new ownership structure is unlikely to change anything overnight, the source said, refusing to be identified because it was not permitted to talk to the media.
The violent nature of the game has been the cause of many complaints from all directions, said the source. This does not change with the change in ownership rights.
A spokeswoman for PUBG Corp in South Korea said that the company was looking closely at India 's problems and that it was ready to work on anything that needed improvement.
The company also had talks with Jio Platforms, the digital arm of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, to bring the game back to its largest consumer market.
We had initial talks with Jio Platforms to pursue opportunities for collaboration, but nothing has yet been determined, said the PUBG spokeswoman to Reuters.
Reliance did not respond to a request for comments.
Though officially New Delhi argues that apps have been banned because they collect user data and pose a threat to national security, the move is widely seen as a way to put pressure on Chinese tech firms after a month-long standoff between India and China along the disputed Himalayan border.
