Battlegrounds Mobile India's launch party took place this morning and became an instant hit with those who wanted to watch the game's best players in action.
Battlegrounds Mobile India launched on Android last month, sort of bringing an end to the PUBG Mobile ban in India that had rolled on for eight months. PUBG Mobile and more than 100 other apps bit the dust in India last year after new regulations were brought in by the country's government, clamping down on companies with connections to China.
South Korean PUBG Mobile studio Krafton has worked tirelessly over the course of those eight months to get its game back on the market in India. As you can see above, that has included renaming the game and proving to Indian officials that the new version has no connection to PUBG Mobile's parent company Tencent. Mission accomplished it seems, and to celebrate, a launch party was announced.
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Day one of the two-day tournament took place this morning. If you're wondering just how popular PUBG Mobile was in India, aside from its 200 million downloads, you need to look no further than the launch party's YouTube viewership. According to Krafton's Anuj Tandon, the tournament was being watched by almost half a million people on YouTube India at its peak.
Peaked at almost HALF a MILLION Concurrent viewers!!! #eSports #BGMI ?
— Anuj Tandon (@Anuj_Tandon) July 8, 2021
“10x more people in Hindi than English. Apart from Cricket no other sport demands this viewership in India,” Tandon tweeted, and that was earlier on in the stream when viewership was only at 350,000. Battlegrounds Mobile India is also still awaiting its full launch on iOS, which means its popularity still has massive potential to grow and hopefully reach the levels PUBG Mobile did in the country before it was banned.
It has been a successful launch for Battlegrounds Mobile India so far, but its problems are far from over. Some Indian politicians are claiming the connections to Tencent and China remain and that this new version of PUBG Mobile should also be banned. Accusations that the game continues to send data to Chinese servers despite the previous ban also won't have helped its cause.
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