It’s been almost a month since PUBG has been banned in India. But has India moved on from PUBG. InsideSport tried doing the reality check and found these startling revelations. India actually is still playing PUBG despite of the ban by the Indian government. The professional Esport players to an extent have moved on to other games but the casual players are still playing the game through different means.
The ban by the government agencies is far from implemented. InsideSport reached out few casual PUBG players to check how exactly they are still able to play the most loved game in the Esport world. These casual players informed us, that they can still access and play the game like before the ban.
We asked – How is it possible ? This is what we were informed.
“We just cannot update or download the game on the App store. But In fact Samsung and Xiaomi phones auto-download the most recent PUBG Mobile update through their own browsers”, revealed the casual gamer.
InsideSport decided to dig deeper and probed further from another casual gamer – How PUBG Mobile is still playable? He revealed the below –
“If the game hasn’t been uninstalled from the device, PUBG Mobile still loads and lets you enter a match. Upon opening the game players get an update prompt.
Upon selecting ‘Update’, the game redirects Samsung and Xiaomi phones to open a native browser window and initiates the download of an APK file.
Samsung and Xiaomi Phone automatically start downloading an APK file through your mobile browser.The device will download the required files
The device will ask for permission to install. Upon reopening PUBG Mobile, it will ask to download another 13.7 MB patch and initiate more patch downloads.
After all the updates are complete, the game lets you enter a match as usual. So it is easy to update and still playable”.
After talking to these casual games – InsideSport reached following conclusion –
– Despite the PUBG Mobile ban at the start of the month, the game is still playable in India through an APK update.
– Samsung and Xiaomi phones auto-download the most recent PUBG Mobile update through their own browsers.
– Indian Government can block the game completely if they want.
– The impact of the ban has mainly been only on the esports scene.
If PUBGM is still playable, what has the ban accomplished?
The reality of the ban is that it has mainly impacted only the esports side of PUBG. This can be said just because of the fact that casual players can still continue to play the game without consequences, even if it is deemed illegal to do so. On the other hand pro teams and organizations cannot continue to play, they could face legal action if caught promoting and playing PUBG as an organization. The game has been removed from Gaming Monk and Ewar too which used to host tournaments daily. Professional PUBG players who would earn 25k-1Lakh have been looking for either a different game to play or find a new avenue entirely.
Tencent has lost more than $34 billion since the PUBG Mobile ban in India and they have retaliated too.
Indian players were banned from playing at major tournaments PMPL and PMCO, even though Indian teams had qualified. Teams were hoping to relocate outside India just to play the tournament. The revenue gained from PUBG prize pools was not a small amount, just in August Orange Rock esports placed second in a tournament to win 37Lakh Rupees.
The ban has definitely killed the PUBG Mobile esports scene in its budding stage, the only game which India was ‘one of the best’ at. It has also caused losses for Tencent, break off from PUBG Corp in India region.
How Government can completely ban the game in India ?
The experts in the industry feels that if Government wants they can plug the holes by following measures –
Ask ISPs to filter out known PUBG IP addresses from their routing tables.
Ask DNS providers you stop resolving addresses for known PUBG domains.
Ask Apple and Google to blacklist the apps across phones.
Maybe a combination of these.
InsideSport understand that it takes time to filter out IP address from routing tables, but if the government had realized that the game can still be played after being removed from the playstore maybe then they would take necessary action to remove it. You can know more about how the government can block PUBG here.
Rumor’s of a new version of the game are also doing rounds. Will it see light of the day only time will tell.
