How Krafton brought PUBG successor Battlegrounds back from a ban
Krafton, publisher of one of India’s most popular esports titles, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), made a number of pledges to the government to get the ban on it lifted.
This has emerged from ET’s conversations with senior government officials and Indian gaming industry executives.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Digital TransformationVisitIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitBGMI is the successor to the much-headlined PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).
Though neither the government nor Krafton publicly commented on what led to the ban in July 2022, government officials told ET the South Korean gaming giant had to move data out of servers that had second- or third-tier connections to China as part of conditions for its return.
It’s also learnt to have committed to step up investments in India, a development that was announced three months after BGMI’s ban was lifted.
This was in addition to some changes to the game itself, such as the introduction of strict time limits — for both adult and young players — to tackle concerns over possible addiction.
Krafton did not respond to queries for this story. An email query sent to the IT ministry also did not elicit a response.
The Beginning
At the time it was blocked, BGMI was the most popular online game in the country, with over 100 million registered users, a large chunk of them playing on mobile phones. The game involves a large number of players whose online avatars are dropped into a closed virtual geography. They battle each other using in-game weapons, with the last remaining gamer or team winning the match.
