Two years after PUBG was prohibited in India, BGMI has been deleted from app stores in that nation.
Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) is no longer available in the Indian Play Store and App Store thanks to Google and Apple. Following a New Delhi injunction, both businesses removed the well-known battle royale game from their online storefronts, according to TechCrunch. However, for the time being, anyone in India who already has the game installed can continue to access it.
There are little details behind the game’s abrupt discontinuation. BGMI was released in India a year ago, following the nation’s ban on Krafton’s PUBG Mobile, and the developer said: “We are clarifying how BGMI was removed from Google Play store and the App store and will let you know once we get specific information.” It appears that the developer’s efforts to improve the game, including creating a brand-new avatar, were in vain. The game was re-released as Battlegrounds Mobile India.
This restriction is a serious setback for Krafton as BGMI had just surpassed 100 million registered users in India before it was implemented. In an effort to double down on the gaming market after India banned more than 300 mobile applications connected to China as a result of escalating tensions between the two countries, the developer previously severed ties with publishing partner Tencent and pledged to invest a whopping $100 million in India’s gaming ecosystem. These apps included TikTok and PUBG, and PUBG was the only one to successfully relaunch in the nation out of the hundreds that were also banned.
A local media article is cited by TechCrunch as one of the possible justifications for this prohibition. A boy allegedly killed his mother under the influence of BGMI, according to a news article, but its veracity is still in question. Despite this, the report has been widely disseminated over social media platforms in India, leading officials to declare that an investigation into the occurrence was underway.
Currently, the Indian government has a chilly relationship with Chinese-connected businesses doing business there. The Chinese embassy has criticized the government’s actions in response to raids on the offices of phone manufacturers including Vivo and Oppo. The developer Krafton’s most recent release, New State Mobile, is still accessible for download in India, indicating that the ban is particular to BGMI and not its developer. Krafton has not yet recognized BGMI’s suspension on any of its social media channels.
