Highly addictive smartphone game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds aka PUBG will stop working in India from today. Both PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite, which were banned on September 2 by the Indian government over security concerns, will no longer work in the country.
PUBG Mobile India in a Facebook post said: “Dear Fans, To comply with the interim order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated September 2, 2020, Tencent Games will terminate all service and access for users in India to PUBG MOBILE Nordic Map: Livik and PUBG MOBILE Lite (together, “PUBG Mobile”) on October 30, 2020. The rights to publish PUBG MOBILE in India will be returned to the owner of the PUBG intellectual property.”
“Protecting user data has always been a top priority and we have always complied with applicable data protection laws and regulations in India. All users’ gameplay information is processed in a transparent manner as disclosed in our privacy policy. We deeply regret this outcome, and sincerely thank you for your support and love for PUBG MOBILE in India,” the company further added in its post.
The app was made unavailable to download on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store soon after the ban, but existing users could still access the game and continue playing it. Now, after almost two months, Tencent Games is finally terminating all service and access for users in India to PUBG Mobile and Lite version.
The announcement was sudden, but not surprising since the game was banned last month alongside other Chinese apps, and except for PUBG Mobile, all the other applications had already stopped working long before in the country.