Games Indian millennials are playing

After the ban on PUBG, most youngsters are lapping up other favourites like 'Call of Duty' and 'Garena'

While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, popularly known as PUBG, is currently banned in India and despite several attempts by the game lovers to somehow play it on their mobiles by circumventing the ban via virtual private networks (VPNs) and servers located in other countries, PUBG remains a distant reality for millions and the community is scouting for new games.

Currently, Call of Duty: Mobile and Garena Free Fire are games that have become new favourites among the gaming community. They are the among top three downloaded games across iOS and Android app stores. Another game Among Us topped the list as PUBG Mobile went missing.

According to the reports by Sensor Tower, the game has over 83.8 million installations, making its growth almost 40 times in September this year as compared to the same month last year.
Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio InnerSloth.

Genshin Impact has also become popular in the post-PUBG ban era. The Scribble Rider game from Voodoo became the second most downloaded game in September. Additionally, Indian gaming company nCore announced indigenous multiplayer action game FAU-G to fill the void of PUBG Mobile. FAU-G is slated to launch later this month.

PUBG was among 118 Chinese mobile bans banned by the government for security reasons. India was PUBG’s biggest market before the game was blacklisted with more than 175 million downloads to date. With the ban in place for PUBG Mobile in India, gamers started to look for alternative games from the Play Store and App Store.

“After banning popular games, there is definitely a gap for such genres and it’s time for Indian developers to fill the void. I hope some new games are launched around Diwali,” said Faisal Kawoosa, founder and chief analyst, techARC.