India emerged as the largest contributor to PUBG downloads

India has been a gaming hub for enthusiasts and this reflects in the rapid surge in the number of downloads of one of the most popular gaming apps PUBG for which India is the top contributor.

According to data provided by market intelligence and analytics for mobile apps, PUBG has received 24% or 175 million out of the total 734 million downloads till date from India. This number includes downloads of PUBG Mobile and the Chinese version of the game, Game For Peace.

The Tencent-owned gaming app has received 16.7% of the total downloads from China followed by the US with 6.4% of the overall downloads to date.

The online multiplayer battle royale game has been among top three gaming platforms before and during the lockdown when people confined themselves to their homes. Even after the lockdown, PUBG maintained its mojo and amassed 35.8% of the total installs of 34.2 million from India in May.

A separate data report also revealed that PUBG was the most downloaded gaming app in the world in the first half of the ongoing calendar year or H1 2020. While the country wise split figure was not provided in the report, experts believe that India was the top contributor in terms of number of downloads during the six months period.

India’s homegrown gaming app Ludo King also surfaced as the maiden app from the country in the top 10 list after the announcement of lockdown. In H1 2020, Ludo King remained the eighth rank gaming app across the world.

After the recent clash between Indian and China at the Galwan Valley, the government of India had banned 59 Chinese apps and rumours started flourishing that PUBG might get banned too as it has backing from Tencent. For the uninitiated, PUBG was developed by a Korean gaming company Bluehole while the mobile version of the game was developed by Tencent. Tencent holds around 10% stake in PUBG’s parent company.