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NEW DELHI — Alphabet Inc’s Google on Thursday blocked access to a popular battle-royale game from South Korean developer Krafton, citing an Indian government order.
Krafton shares fell more than 9% on the news on Friday, quickly paring losses to trade up 5.7%.
In a statement, the US tech giant said India had ordered the game Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) to be blocked, forcing it to remove the app from its Play Store.
The game’s website showed that it had more than 100 million users in India. The block comes on the heels of India’s ban in 2020 of another Krafton title, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).
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“Upon receiving the order, following the established process, we have notified the affected developer and blocked access to the app,” a Google spokesperson said.
BGMI was also unavailable on Apple Inc’s App Store on Thursday evening in India.
The reason for the block was not immediately clear.
In Seoul, a Krafton spokesperson said the developer was talking to the relevant authorities and companies to find out the exact situation regarding the suspension in India’s two major app stores.
Local representatives for Apple and India’s IT ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.
A source with direct knowledge of the matter said Google had received the takedown order from the government within the past 24 hours.
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India cited security risks when it banned PUBG, but the move was widely seen as a consequence of deteriorating trade ties with China. At the time, China’s Tencent held the publishing rights for PUBG in India.
The crackdown was part of New Delhi’s ban on more than 100 mobile apps of Chinese origin, following a months-long border standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals.
The ban has since been expanded to cover more than 300 apps. (Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Nupur Anand and Joyce Lee in Seoul; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Clarence Fernandez)