PUBG Mobile India Ban: Krafton Dialogue With Government Likely
It seems that Krafton may finally be in dialogue with the Indian government to bring PUBG Mobile back to India. The ongoing Indian Gaming Show and Conference 2021 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has listed Sean Hyunil Sohn, Head Corporate Development, Krafton as one of its speakers. Now the IGC 2021 isn’t a run of the mill event either as it has the support of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) as well as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, two agencies of the government that have had concerns with the popular battle royale game recently.
According to multiple reports, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has permanently banned over 59 apps including TikTok and WeChat. Reportedly, the government had issued these businesses notices of a permanent ban after being unsatisfied with their responses on how user data was being collected and handled.
Through 2020, the Indian government had banned over 200 Chinese apps citing them to be “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”. While PUBG Mobile was not in the first wave of apps that were banned, it did eventually get banned in September.
This comes at a time when Union Minister Prakash Javadekar mentioned that many mobile games are “violent, explicit and addictive,” and the government plans to promote Indian cultural ethos in games, signalling out PUBG Mobile in particular.
“PUBG was just one example of it, but criticising those games is not the solution. The solution is to create our own games and apps in line with #MakeInIndia for the world so that these are adopted the world over for their basic values that are an integral part of our Indian ethos,” Javadekar said.
