Is BGMI coming back???

 

In Short

• South Korean developer Krafton’s BGMI was banned by the Indian government over safety concerns.
• The game was removed from Play Store and App Store in July 2022
• In November 2022, Krafton issued a press release in which it said that the company will continue trying to bring the game back.

By Divyanshi Sharma: When Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) was made available on Google Play Store and App Store in 2021, it was hailed as the Indian version of PUBG among gamers. However, their happiness was short-lived as Krafton’s insanely popular battle royale game was banned in India in July 2022.

Every now and then, rumours about the game returning to India keep surfacing, but is it really happening anytime soon? Only Krafton can tell. As of now, there is no official announcement about when the game will be making a comeback, but what we do know is that Krafton is trying its best to bring the game back for Indian players. Several YouTube content creators have also claimed that the game will be coming back to the Indian fanbase soon, but nobody knows when this will happen.

BGMI ban in India

South Korean developer Krafton’s BGMI was banned by the Indian government over safety concerns. The game was banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) under section 69A of the IT Act 2000. In 2020, the government banned the immensely popular game PUBG, along with other Chinese applications, over safety concerns. The game was removed from Play Store and App Store in July 2022.

The Indian government hasn’t issued an official statement about why BGMI was banned, but reports suggest that the game was banned after it was pointed out that BGMI was just a rebranded version of PUBG, and that Chinese company Tencent was still in charge of the game in the backend. Reports of BGMI communicating with servers in China, either directly or indirectly, also surfaced.

Krafton’s response

After the ban, Krafton released an official statement assuring players that the game will return to India and that they are solving the issues with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). "We are clarifying how BGMI was removed from the Google Play store and the App store and will let you know once we get specific information,” the statement read.

While speaking to India Today tech, a company representative said in July 2022, "We are clarifying how BGMI was removed from the Google Play store and the App store and will let you know once we get specific information".

What's next?

To conclude, we can only know about the BGMI relaunch date in India once Krafton issues an official statement about the same. As of now, there is no official announcement by the makers and players shouldn’t rely on rumours and articles claiming they know when the game will release. Reports claim that several websites are also listing fake download links of BGMI updates. Players must exercise caution while clicking on any such links as the game is unlikely to return until its issues with the government are solved.