Google has pulled the popular battle royale game Battlegrounds Mobile India, more popularly known as BGMI, from Play Store in India after a New Delhi order, a year after developer Krafton launched the app following a ban on similar title PUBG in the South Asian market. The BGMI game has also been delisted from Apple’s App Store in the country.
The Android-maker confirmed the development shortly after publication of the story. “On receipt of the order, following established process, we have notified the affected developer and have blocked access to the app that remained available on the Play Store in India,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.
India invoked a section of its IT law, called 69A, to impose the ban, the 2 sources with direct knowledge told Reuters.
The section allows the government to block public access to content in the interest of national security, among other reasons. Orders issued under the section are generally confidential in nature.
India's government blocked a popular battle-royale format game from Krafton Inc , a South Korean company backed by China's Tencent , as it was concerned about its data sharing and mining in China, an Indian government source said.