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The Taliban-led Afghan government banned PUBG Battlegrounds for being “too violent” and for “misleading youth.”
First ordered back in April, the Khaama Press reports that the Taliban is finally pushing through with its order to ban PUBG Battlegrounds from the country within the next three months. The reason for the ban is that the Taliban believes that PUBG Battlegrounds is “too violent” and is “misleading youth.” Indeed, there's a case to be made that PUBG Battlegrounds is violent, but we're not very sure about the misleading youth part.
The ban was decided by the Afghan government's Ministry of Telecommunication in a meeting with the Afghan Sharia Law Enforcement administration. Apart from PUBG Battlegrounds, the Ministry of Telecommunication also seeks to ban the popular social media platform TikTok.
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With this decision, the Afghan government is compelling telecommunication companies and internet service providers in the country to limit access to these apps. It appears that the mobile version of PUBG will be receiving the ban within three months since the decision has been made, while TikTok is sought to be banned by the next month. Both apps were said to be “wasting the time of the youth.”
This won't be the first time for a country to ban PUBG, as Afghan is only following in the footsteps of India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, both publishers and players have found ways to reintroduce the game to its audience – with the game Battlegrounds Mobile India eventually finding a release, while players circumvented internet rules through virtual private networks (VPN) services.
Prior to the ban, PUBG was big in Afghanistan. By 2021, the game has been registering about 100,000 concurrent players at its peak in Afghanistan alone. We don't doubt that both Tencent and the player base of PUBG in Afghanistan will be able to find a way to work around this ban, just like anywhere else where PUBG is banned.
