PUBG ban: PUBG lovers need not be sad for too long. The PlayerUnknown Battleground corporation has reportedly decided to pull back its association with the PUBG mobile franchise Tencent Games, to regain scores of lost gamers days after the PUBG ban, along with 117 other Chinese apps.

The PUBG Corporation understands and respects the measures taken by the government as the privacy and security of player data is a top priority for the company, it said, adding that “It hopes to work hand-in-hand with the Indian government to find a solution that will allow gamers to once again drop into the battlegrounds while being fully compliant with Indian laws and regulations.”

The PUBG Corporation has announced that it will hand over PUBG Mobile, which was handled by Tencent Games in India, to a South Korean firm. As a result, the banned game may be unbanned from India very soon. 

In its statement following the PUBG ban, the gaming company said, “PUBG Corporation fully understands and respects the measures taken by the government as the privacy and security of player data is a top priority for the company. It hopes to work hand-in-hand with the Indian government to find a solution that will allow gamers to once again drop into the battlegrounds while being fully compliant with Indian laws and regulations.

The news was music to the ears of the upset and outraged fans who finally had a reason to rejoice. Several others mocked Akshay Kumar’s upcoming game “FAU-G” that was announced just a couple of days after PUBG got shelved in the country.

Earlier, PUBG gamers had taken it upon themselves and made pleas to PUBG Corp on Twitter to end ties with the Chinese company and unban the PUBG Mobile app in India.

The Centre banned 118 more Chinese mobile applications last week over concerns regarding “security, surveillance and data privacy”. “The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures,” the Centre said in the statement.

Earlier, the Union government had already banned 108 Chinese apps in two phases, including the popular short video making platform TikTok.

The June ban of 59 Chinese apps was followed by blocking of 47 more Chinese apps that were clones and variants of the ones banned earlier.

Mean-while, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that the world must be better prepared when the next pandemic strikes as he called on countries to invest more in public health. “This will not be the last pandemic,” Tedros told a news briefing in Geneva, referring to coronavirus which has claimed nearly 9 lakh lives across the world and as cases rose over 2.7 crores. “History teaches us that outbreaks and pandemics are a fact of life. But when the next pandemic comes, the world must be ready – more ready than it was this time,” he said. Earlier, the WHO chief had warned against COVID ‘vaccine nationalism’, calling on countries around the world to join forces to tackle the coronavirus.