Has PUBG been banned by Bombay High Court? A fake notice claiming that PUBG mobile game has been banned in India is doing the rounds on social media.
The fake news spread after a legal notice started doing rounds on Facebook and now has been forwarded on WhatsApp as well. The false legal notice claims that PUBG Mobile has been banned in India. Notably, the legal notice has multiple mistakes and grammatical errors in it.
Source: Indian Express | Timesnownews
Message Text:
CENTER FOR GOVERNANCE
Govt. Of India
Date: 22.12.2018
Time: 11:45am.
REG.ALLIANCE OF BAN OF GAME PUBG
As per the consideration of many incidents and proofs that have been submitted by respected lawyers and majestratives,It came to conclude that PUBG MOBILE game is creating a lot of nuisance and irrespective activities and many students spoiling their own lives….
All we have knew that few countries took action on ban of this game. It is to inform you that PUBG will not perform any operations and legally notices have been sent to tencent games corporation.
.please note
K.SRINIVASULU
Prejudge.
High Court
—End of Message Text—
NARRATIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
The hoax news that PUBG was being banned in India slowly picked traction on social media. Various PUBG fans started posting videos and Facebook messages on this topic. Some of them did fact checking themselves and posted content flagging this document as fake. Two examples are below:
Technical Gift:
The solemonster’s:
Others were still confused as to the authenticity of the letter.
OUR FACT CHECK
Fact Crescendo team did a fact check and found that the letter being shared around on social media and WhatsApp groups is Fake & a Hoax.
The above quoted letter is written with many grammatical mistakes and is not an authentic judicial or governmental document. There is no word like “majestratives”, as used in the letter. In fact we feel the writer wanted to write “magistrates’ but instead misspelled it as “majestratives”. Also, there is no position as a ‘prejudge’ in our Judicial system, making it very obvious that this was a mischievous prank.
Recently, there have been many messages on twitter and social media which are advocating banning of PUBG. There are even petitions on Change.Org, which are requesting Government of India to ban PUBG. Our readers can view them here:
https://www.change.org/p/public-and-youth-s-support-ban-mobile-game-pubg-in-india
https://www.change.org/p/government-of-india-ban-pubg-and-fortnite
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole. Source: Wikipedia
In actuality, PUBG officially banned over 30,000 accounts after Vikendi update, and introduced various anti-cheating features. You can read about this more here.
Also, there was a temporary ban on new videogames but it was in China not India.
“China just lifted its ban on new video games after nearly a year of keeping games from getting released. Its regulatory arm approved 80 new games today, as first reported by Reuters. But curiously enough, none of them are from the country’s biggest gaming company, Tencent.
Tencent is best known as the company that owns WeChat, China’s pervasive app that can make payments, host mini-apps, and connect people through messages and emojis. But its main source of revenue is video games it owns like Arena of Valor (also known as Honor of Kings), League of Legends, and ones that it’s invested heavily in such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite.” Source: The Verge
Various other fact checking websites have also debunked this picture. For example Ayupp.com in this article here and The Lallantop below:
Our readers can read various articles published by News Media online below:
| Indian Express | Timesnownews | Amarujala |
| Gadgets.NDTV | News18 | TOI |
IN CONCLUSION
Fact Crescendo confirms that this story of PUBG being banned by Bombay High Court is a Fake & a Hoax.
Fact Crescendo advises its readers to refrain from falling prey to unsubstantiated & misleading WhatsApp forwards and social media posts. When in doubt, visit various news media & fact checking websites online.
Dear Readers,
Do you feel that a certain story is fake? Do you know some additional factual details about a claim being shared on social media?
Then you can submit that claim or news here, for our team to verify and fact check for you.
Thanks,
-Fact Crescendo Team-
