Amid heightening tensions between India and China, earlier this week the government of India took a decision regarding data security and banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps in India. Ministry of Electronics and IT stated that these apps were posing threat to India’s sovereignty, defence, and public order. The banned list includes some most-used apps like TikTok, UC Browser, Shareit, Clash of Kings and many others. But the government did not ban popular mobile games like Call of Duty Mobile and PUBG mobile. After banning TikTok, many people were asking why Call of Duty Mobile and PUBG have not been banned despite their ownership belongs to Tencent Games, which is based in the Shenzhen region of China. The reason behind not banning these two is that these apps are not Chinese completely.
The PUBG Mobile game has been developed and managed by the PUBG Corporation which is a subsidiary of Bluehole company, which is based in South Korea. When this game got huge success, then Chinese company Tencent Games approached PUBG Corporation to distribute PUBG mobile in China. When this game emerged as grand success in China, Tencent Games brought it to India.
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If we talk about Call of Duty mobile Activision partnered with TiMi Studios to launch this game. TiMi studio is a subsidiary of Tencent Games. But the ownership of Call of Duty belongs to Activision which is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard a company based in California.
Both of these games have more than 230 million downloads. These games earned most of their profits from India and China. However, it is still opaque that the IP registrations and the mixed registration are the actual reason for not banning these apps. Regarding this, the government has not issued any formal statement.
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Both of these games are on the Google Play Store and the Apple Store to download. The Indian servers of both the games are also live and are functioning at 100 per cent capacity.
Apple and Google have now removed all 59 banned apps from Apple store and Play store for Indian region.
Among all these apps TikTok was the first to be removed from the stores. The popular short video platform is now completely offline in India. However, in a statement, TikTok said that it is meeting with the Indian government to work on this situation.