The popular battle royale game Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), which had 100 million users in India, may return to the country’s Apple App Store and Google Play Store after being banned for months. According to sources, News18 was advised during a meeting with the Indian government to lift the ban for a limited time with certain changes to the original version of BGMI. The plan was most likely devised after the game developer made some changes and assured the government that it would follow all of the rules.
According to the report, the app will be unblocked from e-stores for the first three months, and players will not be able to play the game for an unlimited amount of time in a day because there will be a time limit and restrictions on how long they can play.
Furthermore, the company has informed government officials that there will be no blood in the game because the color will be changed. In the previous version, players could choose to change the color of the blood from red to blue or green when it was shot, but now that will be the default setting.
The government has asked the company for relevant changes in the game, including the server, since the game has been blamed for murders and suicides by players obsessed with it, according to the report.
The Indian government banned PUBG’s Indian version, BGMI, in July 2022 due to alleged privacy and safety concerns in the country.
Previously, a government official claimed that, while the app had some issues, the main one was that it communicated with servers located in China, either directly or indirectly, highlighting a security issue for the country.
However, according to an RTI response, the game was banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) in response to requests from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), following section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Inf. union for Public) Rules, 2009.
This isn’t the first time there’s been speculation about BGMI‘s return. Pratik “Alpha Clasher” Jogiya and Sohail “Hector” Shaikh, creators of gaming content, claimed in December 2022 that BGMI might return to Android platforms soon. However, not much clarity was provided on the matter.
It should be noted that the Indian government has banned PUBG, TikTok, and 58 other Chinese apps due to security concerns. In 2021, BGMI was released as an Indian version of PUBG.
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