Third time’s the charm? Indian esports regroups after PUBG, BGMI bans

Between the PUBG ban in 2020 and BGMI’s shadow ban in July 2022, Indian esports has taken critical hits, both in terms of viewership and revenue. India’s young pro gamers may be down, but they’re not yet out

BGMI accounts for over 50% of the total esports viewership in India and likely brought in over 50% of total viewership for streaming platforms

Its quiet removal from the Google and Apple app stores has athletes and enthusiasts abandoning it already, despite servers still being accessible in India

The industry is already preparing death of the game, which had over 100M users, even as the government hasn’t put out clarifications about the removal

But with an oversized influence on the esports scene, moving on will be an arduous and painful affair

On the evening of 28 July, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) suddenly went missing from Google’s India Play Store and Apple’s App Store. The disappearance quickly began trending on social media—after all, BGMI is one of the country’s most popular mobile games, with well over a hundred million registered users.

About three weeks later, when we asked Naman “Mortal” Mathur about that evening, his eyes widened and his eyebrows furrowed upwards. Mathur is among the most popular BGMI athletes in the country, commanding over seven million YouTube subscribers. “Afraid,” he declared quickly. “I was, we were, all afraid.”

A pause. “It was a déjà vu,” the widely-admired player finished. He was referring to India’s 2020 ban ban Reuters India bans 59 mostly Chinese apps amid border crisis Read more on Chinese apps that had also included PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). The runaway battle royale hit, which had over 170 million installs in India, was a precursor to BGMI.

Battle royale games usually have multiple players and pits competitors against each other in a last-man-standing fight. They’re also awfully popular in the country.

Just ten days before the latest app store removal, a tournament called BGMI Masters Series became the first esports esports Esports Short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games event to be broadcast on primetime television. With a prize pool of Rs. 1.5 crore (US$187,000), the tournament clocked over 1.2 million TV views, reportedly reportedly Afkgaming BGMI Masters Series 2022 Reportedly Breaks Viewership Record on Television Read more surpassing the India viewership of the UEFA Champions League finals and the French Open finale. It also garnered garnered ET BGMI Master Series 2022 records a viewership of 100 million on Loco Read more over 100 million views for homegrown game streaming platform Loco.

The PUBG ban had also come right at the game’s peak, after deadly border clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers. At the time, Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent was not only the franchisee owner of the game in India, but also the second-largest shareholder in the game’s publisher, South Korean gaming behemoth Krafton Inc.

By July 2021, Krafton had taken on taken on Business Standard After ban, PUBG ends ties with China's Tencent Games for India franchise Read more the responsibility of publishing the game in India by itself, employing employing IGN Battlegrounds Mobile India Update Fixes China Server Data Sharing Read more safeguards for Indian data collected from the game.

AUTHOR

Soumyajit Saha

Soumyajit covers the operations of Big Tech companies and OTTs in India. Before The Ken, he covered equity and currency markets in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand for Reuters. You can hit him up via email about anything, except money he allegedly owes you.

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Gaurav Tyagi

Gaurav covers the money trail around everything startups and internet economy. A graduate from the University of Delhi, he joined Institute of Chartered Accountants of India before finding his way to research and journalism. Apart from being a petrolhead, he pretends to be Ari Gold on weekends.

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