“PUBG taught me things like teamwork, strategising and decision making and it didn’t take much for the game to become important rather than being another casual activity,” says Samudrala Deekshith, who has been a PUBG player for the past 2 years now, and is trying to make his mark in professional E-Sports as a full-time career option.
Deekshith is just one name in the gaming world, shocked by the Centre’s decision to ban the gaming app along with 118 other malicious applications for being ‘prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.’ But, there are more like him.
Soon after the ban, Twitterverse went crazy, with some being optimistic about the move, others posted snapshots showing them downloading other battle royal games and some posted funny memes.
Deekshith says the news left him miserable “as we gamers consider PUBG an emotion, not just an empty playground of the game. I de-stressed not only by playing the game but by talking to my teammates who are my virtual friends. I really don’t know what is going to come next. I went from being busy all day playing from morning till night to being clueless and bored in a single evening.”
PUBG is a multi-player battle royale game in which 100 players fight for supremacy on an island and the last man standing wins the round.
Delhi-based PUBG gamer Yasir H Wani, wonders why authorities are ruining the gaming community. “It’s funny, many memes are doing rounds, with more pressing issues at hand, why are authorities hell bent on ruining the happiness of the gaming community! We understand the political angle and drift though, but find such blanket bans funny to say the least,” Wani told Opoyi, adding that there will be people who will still try to access the game through other ways.
“… so there won’t be a herculean change in life as such,” said the gamer and added that one thing he is surely going to miss is the shared experience. Many people playing together, at the same time talking to each other even when geographically apart will be missed, he added.
Jitendra Sharma aka Ted The Stoner, who runs one of the most popular Indian meme pages on Instagram and is also a gamer, says he is a little disappointed with the move because it was actually a game where ‘a lot of us used to connect with our friends as well as our audience.’
When asked how the gaming app had received a lot of flak for influencing millennials in a negative way, he told Opoyi, “Anything done in moderation has no repercussions. It depends on how many hours you spend playing PUBG. Also, a lot of people made their careers playing PUBG. But yes, you got to agree that it did affect a lot of people negatively too but only because they couldn’t understand ‘moderate’”
Well, every new move has a silver lining and seems a Delhi-based gamer Ankit Aggarwal found that for him. “Well the family members will be very happy that PUBG time will be there time now,” he said
