India was a huge market for various Chinese apps such as Tik Tok and PUBG. Over 80 apps have been banned by now, but the most hard-hit losses are being faced by the parent companies Ten Cent for PUBG and Byte Dance for Tik Tok.
The app witnessed around 10.7 Mn downloads globally in September, a 26.7% fall in the number of installs from 14.6 million in August. According to industry watchers and analysts, the decline in downloads won’t impact PUBG’s revenue. However, they believe that its scale, prospective monetization, and valuation will be hit.
“Ban of PUBG in India doesn’t have an impact on its revenue but it’s certainly impacting the game’s reach as India was the largest market in terms of downloads,” said Rishi Alwani, co-founder of gaming-focused publication The Mako Reactor.
This comes off as an unintentional but a foreseen casualty of the ban as PUBG was responsible for enabling its surrounding and allied ecosystem to make money from its popularity in India.
“PUBG is in an early conversation with Airtel for handing over distribution rights to the telecom giant. This desperation shows that PUBG has been trying hard to get back into the Indian market,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity.
“The gaming platform is also busy raising a lean team in India. It has been interviewing candidates with experience of under 4 to 6 years,” the source said.
Despite this, there still seem chances for PUBG to come back since the parent company is Korean and the ‘mobile’ version of the game was brought to us by Ten Cent, which is Chinese. It was reported that PUBG overcame a total loss of $46 Bn, after its ban in India.