An Indian company is set to launch a Battle Royale mobile video game in association with Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, taking advantage of the void left by the ban of popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) from Chinese technology company Tencent. Bengaluru-based nCore Games will launch its Fearless and United: Guards (FAU-G) game in late October, company co-founder Vishal Gondal told Reuters on Friday.
“This game was in the works for a few months,” Gondal said. “In fact, the first level of the game is based on Galwan Valley.”
Clashes in June between Indian and Chinese troops along a disputed border site in the Galwan Valley, high in the Himalayas, left 20 Indian soldiers dead.
Since then, India has affected the Chinese tech companies that dominate India’s internet economy, with successive app bans. The latest such move on Wednesday banned 118 apps, mostly of Chinese origin, including PUBG, leaving Indian gamers shocked and angry.
NCore’s FAU-G, which stands for soldier, aims to tap into Indian patriotism and 20 percent of its net income will go to a state-backed trust that supports the families of soldiers who die in service, Gondal said. .
Actor Akshay Kumar, the son of an army officer who is known for supporting the cause of Indian soldiers and was instrumental in creating the trust, also helped with the concept of the game, according to Gondal.
“He (Kumar) came up with the title of the game, FAU-G,” Gondal said, adding that he expected to gain 200 million users in a year.
The FAU-G launch also comes at a time when anti-Chinese sentiment is high in India, with merchants and businessmen echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for an “atma-nirbhar” or self-sufficient India. .
India’s first app ban in June, which banned ByteDance-owned TikTok, prompted an increase in the use of local video-sharing apps and even media company Zee Entertainment Enterprises launched its own app.
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.
.
