Reuters 
Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil and Joyce Lee

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NEW DELHI — India has blocked a popular battle-royale game from Krafton Inc, a South Korean company backed by China’s Tencent, using a law invoked from 2020 to ban Chinese apps on national security grounds, a source said. . Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) has been removed from Alphabet Inc’s Google Play Store and Apple Inc’s App Store since Thursday afternoon in India. The removal of BGMI, which had more than 100 million users in India, comes after India banned another Krafton title, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), in 2020.

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The PUBG crackdown was part of New Delhi’s ban on more than 100 mobile apps of Chinese origin, following a months-long border standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals. The ban has since been extended to cover more than 300 apps, including the popular gaming app ‘Free Fire’, which is owned by Singaporean tech group Sea Ltd. Tencent held a 13.5 percent stake in Krafton at the end of March through an investment vehicle, according to Krafton’s regulatory filing. Krafton shares fell more than 9% on the news on Friday, with losses later paring 4.5% in afternoon trade in Seoul. The company said in May that India accounted for a high single-digit percentage of its revenue in the first quarter of this year. A Google spokesman said it blocked the game following a government directive, while India’s IT ministry and Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

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In Seoul, a Krafton representative said the developer was talking to relevant authorities and companies to understand the exact situation regarding the suspension on the two major app stores in India. “The government doesn’t interfere in which apps can work and which can’t. They address digital security and privacy issues and BGMI complies with all guidelines. MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) also noted that PUBG and BGMI are different games,” Krafton’s India CEO Sean Hyunil Sohn told news portal TechCrunch earlier this week. “CHINA’S INFLUENCE” India invoked a section of its IT law to impose the ban, the source, who had direct knowledge but declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.

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Section 69A of India’s IT Act allows the government to block public access to content for reasons of national security, among others. Orders issued under the section are generally confidential in nature. Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) and non-profit organization Prahar had repeatedly asked the government to probe the “China influence” of BGMI, Prahar president Abhay Mishra said. The SJM is the economic wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a powerful Hindu nationalist group close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party. “In the so-called new avatar, BGMI was no different from the old PUBG with Tencent still controlling it in the background,” Mishra said. The ban drew strong online reactions from popular players in India on Twitter and YouTube. “I hope our government understands that thousands of esports athletes and content creators and their lives depend on BGMI,” tweeted Abhijeet Andhare, a Twitter user with more than 92,000 followers. (Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi, Joyce Lee in Seoul; Additional reporting by Nupur Anand; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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