new delhi,june 18
“Yeh PUBG wala hai kya?” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had quipped during the ‘Pariksha pe Charcha 2.0’ in January 2019, asking a mother who raised concerns about her son being too much involved into online gaming. The PUBG game has since crossed many levels before coming to a halt.PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) mobile game, immensely popular among the teenagers and Gen Z in the country, was banned in September last year along with several other Chinese apps amid incursion attempts into the Indian territory at Pangong Tso in eastern Ladakh by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.PUBG Mobile, largely owned by South Korean company Krafton, was banned for its association with the Chinese tech giant Tencent. PUBG then had nearly 33 million users in India.In November last year, PUBG Corporation said that it was making a comeback with the creation of an Indian subsidiary and a new game, stressing that it also plans to make investments worth $100 million in the country to cultivate the local video game, esports, entertainment and IT industries.The battle royale game is now back, in a new avatar as ‘Battlegrounds Mobile India’ with customised features for its fans.Does this pave the way for other banned Chinese apps to alter their course and re-enter the country via registering entities at neutral locations with a promise to keep the data of the gamers within India? What will happen to the data of crores of Indians who were playing the original PUBG Mobile?
According to leading cyber law expert Virag Gupta, PUBG and many other apps were banned under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, since they were involved in activities causing prejudice to the sovereignty and integrity of the country.”After imposing the ban, the government has failed to get control of huge amount of data pertaining to crores of Indians. The relaunch of PUBG Mobile through a new setup may be a big corporate fraud which needs thorough investigation by the Home Ministry and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) about its association with the previous owner, IP rights holder on data and its Chinese connection,” Gupta told IANS.The government should also direct Google Play Store in India to not allow the game with fresh branding, “in view of last year’s ban order, otherwise other banned apps will re-enter India through this modus operandi”, Gupta stressed.
