New Delhi, Nation Now

PUBG MOBILE, a wildly popular online multiplayer shooting game, is among 118 Chinese apps blocked by the government today amid tension over fresh Chinese provocation in Ladakh. The move is in the interest of India’s sovereignty and integrity, defence and security, the government said in a statement.

Tencent’s PUBG Mobile ranks among the world’s top five smartphone games with over 734 million downloads. There are close to 50 million active PUBG players in India, according to reports and the game clocks in some 13 million daily users.

According to the IT Ministry, the Apps “are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”.

“This decision is a targeted move to ensure safety, security and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace,” the statement said, adding that the move would safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users.

In a measure of PUBG’s huge popularity in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during an event on exam stress last year, had remarked to a mother complaining about her teen: “Yeh PUBG-wala hai kya (Is he a PUBG player?)”.

In June, the government banned 59 mobile apps including Bytedance’s TikTok, Alibaba’s UC Browser and Tencent’s WeChat, also citing security concerns.

Explaining its latest move, the ministry said it had received many complaints about the misuse of some mobile apps on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting user data to servers outside India.