The PUBG mobile app is no longer available on Google Play and App Store, following India's ban on 118 Chinese-origin apps. The game continued to work for those who had it downloaded earlier and this number is close to 145 million. Also, the app can be accessed and the game played in case you do so via computers.
The mobile game, like in the case of short-video sharing platform TikTok, is set to lose big time because of the Chinese connection. Unlike the apps that were banned in the initial phase and mostly involved those of Chinese origin such as TikTok, AliExpress, UCWeb etc, PUBG is not entirely Chinese – a fact that many people not are aware of.
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Is PUBG a Chinese app?
The answer is no. PUBG is not a Chinese application, in fact, it was conceptualized by a Canadian, Brendan Greene. The game was developed and published by a South Korean company PUBG corporation which is a subsidiary of Bluehole, a South Korean game development studio.
When the game was first launched in December 2017, it was made for PCs only. It was only at a later date that the company got associated with the Chinese giant Tencent Holdings which published the mobile-only version PUBG Mobile in March 2018. Since the game was graphics-heavy and required powerful hardware to run it smoothly, Tencent published another version of the game along with PUBG corporation - PUBG Mobile Lite in August 2019.
Both the mobile versions were very well received by the users across the globe and has been the primary reason behind its stellar growth. However, the game itself isn’t Chinese by any stretch of the imagination and only the mobile apps that were published by a Chinese company - Tencent Holdings, have been banned.
Is it legal to play PUBG’s PC version in India?
Yes, it is perfectly legal to play PUBG on PCs in India as government's list only talks about the mobile versions of the game. PUBG can be played on any regular PC or a console without the need of a VPN or any tinkering with the settings of the game or the PC. There are some reports, Tencent holds a 10% stake in Bluehole, so we could yet have a scenario where the PC version also joins the banned list.
Since both PC and Mobile games are different, you may find it tough to acclimatise with some of its features. In fact, the PC version is supposed to be more advanced and has better graphics. It is available to play on Xbox, PC, PS4, and Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service.
As per the specifications mentioned on Steam, you need a PC or a gaming laptop with 64-bit Windows operating system not older than Windows 7 with minimum Intel Core i5-4430 or an AMD FX-6300 processor and a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or a 2G AMD Radeon R7 370 graphics card. The system should have at least 8 GB RAM and 30GB of storage space available to play the game smoothly.
In case you still want to play a similar game on Mobile, then you can have a look at PUBG Mobile alternatives.
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