India has blocked the BGMI game using the same regulation that it has used to restrict China-sourced apps

NEW DELHI, July 29 – According to a report, India blacklisted the popular game BGMI from Krafton Inc, a South Korean corporation financed by China’s Tencent, citing a rule it has used since 2020 to restrict Chinese apps due to national security concerns.

Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) was deleted from Alphabet Inc’s Google Play Store as well as from Apple Inc’s App Store in India on Thursday evening.

The elimination of BGMI, which has over 100 million users in India, follows India’s 2020 ban of another Krafton game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).

Following a months-long border confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals, New Delhi banned more than 100 mobile apps of Chinese provenance.

Since then, the restriction has been expanded to include more than 300 apps, including the famous gaming game ‘Free Fire,’ which is owned by Singapore’s tech giant Sea Ltd.

According to Krafton’s regulatory filing, Tencent owned 13.5 percent of Krafton through an investment vehicle as of the end of March.

Krafton shares fell more than 9% on the news on Friday, before recovering to be down 4.5 percent as of afternoon trade in Seoul. India accounted up a high single digit percentage of the company’s revenue in the first quarter of this year, according to a May report.

A Google spokeswoman stated that the game was disabled in response to a government decision, while the Indian IT ministry and Apple did not respond to calls for comment.

A Krafton representative in Seoul said the developer was speaking with relevant authorities and firms to determine the exact issue behind the ban on India’s two major app shops.

“The government has no speak over which apps work and which do not. They intervene in matters of digital security and privacy, and BGMI follows all requirements. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has also stated that PUBG and BGMI are two distinct games “Sean Hyunil Sohn, CEO of Krafton India, told news website TechCrunch earlier this week.

CHINA IMPACT

According to the source, who had firsthand knowledge but declined to be identified owing to the delicacy of the topic, India imposed the ban by invoking a portion of its IT law.

Section 69A of India’s IT law empowers the government to restrict public access to content for a variety of reasons, including national security. Orders issued under this clause are normally considered confidential.

Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) and non-profit Prahar had frequently requested that the government probe BGMI’s “China influence,” according to Prahar president Abhay Mishra. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a prominent Hindu nationalist group allied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, is the economic section of the SJM.

“In the so-called new avatar, the BGMI was no different than the previous PUBG, with Tencent still managing it in the background,” Mishra explained.

Popular Indian gamers took to Twitter and YouTube to express their outrage at the ban.

“I hope our government realises that hundreds of esports athletes and content creators rely on BGMI for their livelihood,” wrote Abhijeet Andhare, a Twitter user with over 92,000 followers.