Tencent’s PUBG Exits Indian Battle
Geopolitical tensions often push a country to issue a ban on the apps made by the opposing side.
Tencent’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, also known as PUBG, leaves the South Asian country.
This will be the third wave of Chinese app purge this year. The first, which happened in June, banned 59 apps, followed by 47 in July.
In July, India issued a ban on TikTok and other Chinese applications after a border clash with China led to 20 Indian soldiers’ untimely demise.
The ban lingered on technology news for quite a while as India is one of the video-sharing app’s key markets worldwide.
Just two months after the first heated encounter, another round of tension rose over the Himalayan border. This time, it resulted to the death of one of India’s special forces soldiers.
As a quid pro quo measure, the country ordered the ban of 118 Chinese apps, including PUBG.
The modern technology game has millions of users in the republic country. India accounts for 29% of its worldwide downloads.
It is considered one of the state’s few unicorn mobile games. It achieves over 50 million downloads and 33 million daily active users.
Players grew exponentially during the pandemic as more people seek to find entertainment in mobile games. As some users claim, the game became a stress buster and real-world social destruction at a critical time.
Its interactive features of voice and text exchanges allow users to develop a stronger connection with one another in a country where millions cannot afford expensive consoles.
Tencent Makes Concessions
India’s technology ministry said that the app poses a threat to the country’s sovereignty and security, thereby confirming it as a casualty of the geopolitical tensions between two of Asia’s most powerful economies.
Tencent then makes a move to make the app more attractive to the Indian market by creating a lighter version of the app, which will consume fewer data.
This aims to lure Indian players who may make a comeback to the PUBG battlefield in the future.
The country also bans the Chinese giant’s WeChat along with TikTok in July. Another flagship game called Arena of Valor will follow PUBG to the grave.
As a motion for reconsideration, Tencent will meet with Indian authorities to possibly make a compromise to keep the gaming app alive on the Indian market.
The firm said that it takes privacy and security seriously and abides rigidly on the country’s data protection, contrary to what New Delhi claims.
Shares of the Chinese social media group instantaneously fell 2% after the announcement of the ban. Technology experts claim that the band will only pose a modest loss on China’s giant as India only accounts for 2.5% of PUBG’s lifetime revenue.
Although at present, Tencent continues to trade on the red for the second consecutive day. Its market value dipped nearly $34 billion since the start of the ban.
This is the technology company’s second-biggest dip after the WeChat ban in the United States, where Tencent lost $66 billion.
