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Reuters
Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengathil and Joyce Lee
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NEW DELHI — India has blocked a popular battle-royale game from Krafton Inc, a South Korean company backed by China’s Tencent, using a law it has invoked since 2020 to ban Chinese apps on national security grounds, a source said.
Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) was removed from Alphabet Inc’s Google Play Store and Apple Inc’s App Store from Thursday night in India.
The removal of BGMI, which had more than 100 million users in India, comes after India’s 2020 ban on another Krafton title, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).
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The PUBG crackdown was part of New Delhi’s ban on more than 100 mobile apps of Chinese origin, following a months-long border standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals.
The ban has since expanded to cover more than 300 apps, including the popular gaming app Free Fire, owned by Singaporean technology group Sea Ltd.
Tencent held a 13.5 percent stake in Krafton as of the end of March through an investment vehicle, according to Krafton’s regulatory filing.
Krafton shares fell more than 9 percent on Friday’s news, later paring losses and trading down 4.5 percent in afternoon trade in Seoul. In May, the company said India accounted for a high single-digit percentage of its revenue in the first quarter of this year.
A Google spokesperson said the game was blocked following a government directive, while India’s IT ministry and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
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In Seoul, a Krafton spokesperson said the developer is talking to the relevant authorities and companies to understand the exact situation regarding the suspension in the two major app stores in India.
“The government does not interfere in which apps can function and which cannot. They address digital security and privacy issues and BGMI complies with all guidelines. MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) has also noted that PUBG and BGMI are different games,” Krafton India CEO Sean Hyunil Son told news portal TechCrunch earlier this week.
“CHINESE INFLUENCE”
India invoked a section of its IT law to impose the ban, said the source, who had direct knowledge but declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, Reuters said.
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Section 69A of India’s IT Act allows the government to block public access to content in the interest of national security, among other reasons. Orders made under the section are generally confidential in nature.
Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) and non-profit organization Prahar have repeatedly wanted the government to investigate the “Chinese influence” of BGMI, Prahar president Abhay Mishra said. The SJM is the economic wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an influential Hindu nationalist group close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party.
“In the so-called new avatar, BGMI was no different from the previous PUBG, with Tencent still controlling it in the background,” Mishra said.
The ban drew strong online reactions from popular gamers in India on Twitter and YouTube.
“I hope our government understands that thousands of eSports athletes and content creators and their lives depend on BGMI,” tweeted Abhijeet Andhare, a Twitter user with more than 92,000 followers. (Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi, Joyce Lee in Seoul; Additional reporting by Nupur Anand; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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