Indian firm nCore Games and Bollywood celebrity Akshay Kumar are all set to launch a tactical mobile game app to fill in the gap caused by the ban of PUBG in the country.
The Chinese video game app PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), owned by tech firm Tencent was banned along with numerous other apps recently in India after an escalation of its border tension with China.
Akshay Kumar, through his Twitter handle, announced that the PUBG alternative will soon arrive in the country and it will be more than just entertainment.
Supporting PM @narendramodi’s AtmaNirbhar movement, proud to present an action game,Fearless And United-Guards FAU-G. Besides entertainment, players will also learn about the sacrifices of our soldiers. 20% of the net revenue generated will be donated to @BharatKeVeer Trust #FAUG pic.twitter.com/Q1HLFB5hPt
— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) September 4, 2020
nCore Games, based in Bengaluru, which is India’s tech hub in the south, will launch its game ‘Fearless and United: Guards (FAU:G)’, a Royal Mobile Video Game by the end of October, announced Vishal Gondal, the co-founder of the firm.
Gondal said that the game has been in the works for some months now.
20 Indian soldiers were left dead in the clashes in June between the troops of the two countries along the disputed border in Galwan Valley, high up in the Himalayas.
India has hit Chinese tech firms with successive bans on applications since then. This is a major blow to China as its apps dominate India’s internet economy.
The latest move, following increased friction between the two countries, outlawed 118 mostly Chinese-origin apps, including PUBG, leaving Indian gamers shocked and furious.
NCore’s FAU:G, which means a soldier, aims to tap into Indian patriotism as 20 percent of its net revenue will be given to a state-sponsored trust that helps the families of soldiers who die on duty, Gondal said.
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, the son of an army officer, who is known to support the cause of Indian soldiers and was crucial to building the trust has also helped in the development of the game’s name and concept.
The company expects to win 200 million users in a year.
Self-Reliant India
Anti-Chinese sentiment is currently pretty strong in India, with entrepreneurs and traders supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a self-reliant India and FAU:G is highly likely to gain from a launch at this time.
India’s earlier decision to ban apps including ByteDance owned TikTok in June had led to a boom in the use of local video-sharing apps with even entrants gaining huge numbers of users.
