BGMI banned in India over ‘data sharing’ concerns: Report

According to Reuters’ report, the government has banned the royal battle-ground format game, using a section of the IT law that it has invoked since 2020 to ban Chinese apps on national security and data sharing concerns, a source told Reuters.

Under a similar provision of IT laws, the government of India banned more than 100 Chinese apps since 2020, including the Chinese publisher Tencent Games’ PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).

BGMI is the Indian version of Tencent’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) that recently crossed more than 100 million registered users in India. The Krafton game was relaunched in India as BGMI, a year ago to the heavy demands of the gamers.

BGMI is among the biggest Chinese apps that were relaunched and rebranded after the Government of India banned PUBG mobile on September 02, 2020.

Till now, the Government of India has banned more than 270 apps, suspecting the stealing of Indian users’ data and sharing it with Chinese entities.

Many of these apps came back to India with rebranded and new identities while their competitor apps tried to sweep in and filled the void left by others.

Just like the PUBG and BGMI, New State for Indian gamers, Garena had also launched the Garena Free Fire Max after the ban of Garena Free Fire.

Recently, a 16-year-old boy reportedly killed his mother over PUBG. The minor was addicted to the Krafton game. He was enraged after his mother scolded him and asked him to stop playing the game. Later, he shot his mother with his father’s licensed gun on June 04, 2022.

Earlier this year, PRAHAR, a non-profit organisation that works for the socio-economic development of society wrote a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Information Technology, requesting a ban on BGMI under section 69A of the Information Technology Act.

Meanwhile, a major study by the University of Oxford said that the short-term mental-health impact of playing video games “is probably too small” to be noticeable.