PUBG or PlayersUnknown’s Battleground is one of the biggest games currently with over 400 million players worldwide including both the mobile and desktop versions.
PUBG has been called as one of the best-selling and most-played video game of all time where it has sold almost over 50 million copies of the game as counted by June of 2018.
In India itself, the game enjoys a massive fan-following with the country alone counting for almost 200 million downloads.
But it has also created a lot of problems among the youth, so much so that certain cities in India have nearly banned the game and are even arresting people caught playing it.
What Is The Problem With PUBG?
Made by the South Korean company Bluehole’s subsidiary PUBG Corporation, it was released in 2017 with the mobile version coming out in 2018.
PUBG is a survival game with 100 players landing onto an island where they have to survive by gathering weapons, killing other players and with the last player remaining eventually winning the famous ‘chicken dinner’.
Gujarat started the process, becoming the first state to ban the game, where on January 23rd 2019, they put a ban on the game.
A notification was released on March 6th where Manoj Agrawal, police commissioner banned PUBG in the Rajkot city of Gujarat. As per the notice, this was done due to the increase in violent behaviour by children and youth which was suspect to be a result of playing the game.
In fact, they even arrested 19 people, 6 of whom were college students who were caught playing the game.
This is not the first time that such accusations against PUBG are rising up in India. Not that long ago, in January itself, Ahad Nizam, an 11-year-old wrote a letter to various authority figures on local and central government level, asking them to ban the game.
As per his letter, the addiction to the game, mostly by young school-children and college students was affecting their studies and the boy eventually reached the Bombay High Court itself.
Now the BHC has itself asked both Maharashtra and Indian government to respond to the PIL (Public Interest Litigation) filed by him.
A certain psychologist, Dr Dhruv Thakkar even said as per Hindustan Times that, “The game is harmful in a way because it is addictive. The police notification will help curb this craze which, in many cases, is the result of peer pressure.”
As if all that was not enough, on Sunday, two youngsters, Nagesh Gore (24) and Swapnil Annapurne (22) died while they were playing PUBG in the Hingoli district, Maharashtra.
Some 570 km away from Mumbai, the two young men were knocked down by the Hyderabad-Ajmer train, while they were engrossed in playing the game and did not give adequate attention to where they were going.
What Does PUBG Say To All This?
In a statement to News18, PUBG Mobile stated that,
“PUBG Mobile is a game. It is meant merely for entertainment and should be enjoyed in a healthy and responsible manner.
In consonance with our endeavor to continue promoting responsible gaming experience, we are working on the introduction of a healthy gameplay system in India to promote balanced, responsible gaming, including limiting play time for under-aged players.
We were thus surprised to learn that local authorities in a few cities have decided to impose a ban on playing our game.
We are working to understand the legal basis of such bans, and hope we can have a constructive dialogue with relevant authorities to explain our objectives and that they withdraw the prohibition.
To PUBG Mobile players, we want to assure you that we are on your side and we will try our best to find a reasonable solution”
Till yet conversation is still going on between the authorities and the team of PUBG Mobile as per reports and it is not clear till when the ban will last.
What is clear though is that even other cities have started to jump on the bandwagon and caution their citizens about the harmful effects of playing PUBG. These include Mumbai, Delhi and others too, so the creators really need to take a good look at their product, in order to make it easy for Indian players to keep playing the game.
What do you think? Is this PUBG ban in India justified? Or just a waste of time?
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Hindustan Times, Livemint, News18
Find the blogger @chirali_08
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