FAU-G, An Indian Alternative To PUBG, Announced By Akshay Kumar After China App Ban

FAU-G is an India-made PUBG Mobile alternative that is being published by Bengaluru-based nCore games, and Indian gaming industry veteran Vishal Gondal and actor Akshay Kumar have also taken to Twitter to promote FAU. -G. FAU-G is short for Fearless and United-Guards, and tweets promoting the game say it will donate 20 percent of its proceeds to the government’s Bharat Ke Veer fundraising initiative. However, there is no news on the release date of FAU-G. It’s also unclear if the game will be limited to mobile devices or if it will also have a PC version.

Entrepreneur Vishal Gondal, CEO of fitness device maker GOQii, aware a tweet on Friday to reveal the development of FAU-G. Gondal, who founded India Games in 1999, which he sold to Disney in 2011, had invested an undisclosed amount in nCore Games in March last year and is serving the startup as a strategic advisor.

In addition to Gondal, Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar promoted the development of FAU-G through his Twitter account. A poster suggesting the story of the game has also been shared on the microblogging site. It is promoted as a contribution to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Atma Nirbhar Bharat” (Self-Sufficient India) campaign.

FAU-G’s announcement comes a couple of days after the government banned PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite along with 116 other mobile apps in the country that had a link to China. The Battle Royale game was quite popular among young Indian mobile gamers.

Founded in 2018, nCore Games does not have any popular games on its developer profile on Google Play. The company’s site, however, shows that Angry Birds maker Rovio is one of its partners. The company also worked as a partner in the popular mobile battle arena game, Vainglory.

Gaming in India has been slowly gaining momentum and Prime Minister Modi spoke about an indigenous gaming industry just days before the PUBG Mobile ban. In August last year, Indian Air Force officers released a combat-based mobile game titled Indian Air Force: A Cut Above. The Google Play listing for that game shows over 10,00,000 downloads so far.

Should the government explain why Chinese apps were banned? We talked about this on Orbital, our weekly tech podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.