Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), the massively popular shooting game that has been banned by government for several months, will “soon” resume operations after authorities decided to lift their ban, the game’s developer Krafton said in a statement on May 18. The unbanning would allow the Korean firm to once again access its largest market outside China.
“KRAFTON, Inc. is a responsible South Korean organisation that abides by the law and has put in place several measures to ensure compliance with all applicable regulations,” Vibhor Kukreti, head of government affairs for Krafton Inc. India, said in a statement. Mr. Kukreti has worked in the past in policy roles at Apple India.
BGMI was launched as a successor to PUBG Mobile, which was blocked in India following Indo–Chinese border clashes in 2020. While Krafton is a Korean firm, PUBG Mobile is published by Chinese tech giant Tencent. Following the ban, Krafton quickly took over the publishing duties of the franchise, and launched BGMI in 2021. However, even under this new avatar, and after the company announced millions of dollars in forthcoming investments into the Indian gaming space, the Indian government ordered BGMI taken off application marketplaces last July, without publicly offering a reason.
Even in BGMI, the Korean developer made efforts to ease authorities’ misgivings, for instance by locking BGMI to Indian users only, and replacing splashes of blood with green light. The game grew to over 100 million cumulative installations, the company claimed.
