After a banning decision by India, which sees PUBG Mobile losing a significant portion of its overall market, the game’s developer is choosing to cut ties with Tencent and publish the game through its subsidiary, PUBG Corp.
The decision to rescind the publishing rights comes as a result of the prohibition of applications that have ties to China. Consequently, causing the removal of PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite in both the App Store and Google Play Store in India.
Official Statement
In a blog published on PUBG’s website, there it explains why the company is taking back the rights to re-establish it again in India. In it, the company details how it acknowledges the situation, leading to the decision to publish the game via a different business partner.
With a Chinese company seen as deadweight in light of the event, PUBG developer choosing to distance itself from Tencent makes logical sense. Particularly, in serving its own best interest, seeing the repercussion as being currently one-sided.
This means that even if PUBG Corp. chooses to carry the burden of publishing the game themselves overseas, it’s a relatively better option than becoming excluded from a region that sees massive support and following. The idea of which can be overwhelming considering the billions of people that the company could tap on.
No Ramification in China
Furthermore, severing business relationship with Tencent poses no significant ramification to it in the Chinese market. Which unlike India, China is not resorting to the same means. Even then, India has yet to come up with a mobile application with massive Chinese adoption for it to encounter the effect of similar impunity. In essence, making the decision to go separate ways a more appealing choice for the PUBG dev than not.
Choosing to transfer the game’s publishing rights to PUBG Corp., however, is only one step for the game to become accessible again to its valued Indian consumers. As the root of the issue also concerns the country’s national interest and security, the new publisher is trying to negotiate the terms that will ultimately lead towards that goal.
“PUBG Corporation fully understands and respects the measures taken by the government as the privacy and security of player data is a top priority for the company. It hopes to work hand-in-hand with the Indian government to find a solution that will allow gamers to once again drop into the battlegrounds while being fully compliant with Indian laws and regulations.”
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