Pune:Ninong Ering, a former union minister and a Arunachal Pradesh MLA, has called for a ban on the relaunch of PUBG Mobile as Battlegrounds Mobile India, on grounds that it would once again give China’s Tencent Holdings access to the Indian market.
Pre-registrations for the Indian version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) opened on the Google Play Store on May 18, eight months after the popular mobile video game was banned in India following border skirmishes with China in May last year.
In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior union ministers, Ering said that even though the South Korean game publisher was launching the game independently in India, Tencent is currently the second-largest stakeholder with a 15.5% stake in Krafton.
While Krafton stopped its agreement with Tencent in India after the PUBG Mobile ban last year, the Chinese company is still the publisher and distributor of the popular mobile video game outside the country, he said.
Last year, the Government of India had banned PUBG Mobile along with more than 260 other Chinese apps on security and privacy concerns. Ering said that the companies were trying to sidestep Indian laws by relaunching the game as Battlegrounds Mobile India.
“This is a mere illusion and a trick to relaunch the same game with minor modifications and collect user data of millions of our citizens, including our children and transfer it to foreign companies and the Chinese government,” he said in the letter.
Ering raised concerns over the data privacy as well. While the privacy policy for the new game says that that data will be stored in servers located in India and Singapore, it will be transferred to other countries and regions to operate the game service and meet legal requirements.
