PUBG Mobile ban by "High Court of Maharashtra" news is fake

An image that appears to be a legal notice of the “High Court of Maharashtra” order, circulating on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter & WhatsApp states that PubG Mobile is banned in India. It mentions how PUBG Mobile is "creating a lot (sic) of nuisance and irrespective activities (sic) and many students spoiling their own lives". The order is apparently signed by a “Predjudge” at the “High Court of Maharashtra”, K.SRINIVASULU. The order is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, and there’s no such thing as a prejudge in the Indian judicial system. Also, High Courts in India are named after cities, not states. Clearly, the image is a hoax. 

A Google search of the name of the “prejudge” revealed there’s no one by that name serving as a judge in the Bombay High Court. The fake order goes as far as to say that Tencent has been served with “legal” notices. Chinese internet giant that owns PubG Mobile has also not commented on any court orders issued on December 2018.

It’s unclear where the hoax originated from. However, there are multiple appeals on Twitter to ban the game. The hoax image has also been circulated wildly, with many seemingly believing it and celebrating it even. There’s even a change.org petition doing the rounds that states "Indian government/law should ban this game in India if they want to save this generation.” The game in fact, banned a lot of players, over 30,000 players including 15 professional players for cheating on the platform.

The popular battle game indeed has many takers in India. In a recent survey undertaken by Jana, 62 percent of the 1027 respondents said they played PubG Mobile, primarily between the ages of 16 and 24. The game is three times more popular than the next most popular game in India, Free Fire.

These numbers are inline with PUBG Mobile's popularity globally. Outside of China, PUBG Mobile now has 30 million daily active users and has hit 200 million downloads, Tencent said in a statement. However, the 200 million downloads number doesn't paint an accurate picture of how many people play the game. The daily active users is a metric people should look at to gauge PUBG Mobile's popularity and even that number is very high at 30 million.

The fact that PUBG Mobile runs smoothly on even low-end Android devices has boosted its popularity. Thanks to being on Android (as well as iOS), PUBG Mobile dominates Asia and China according to Sensor Tower, with the US making up only 30 percent of PUBG's revenue.