PUBG Mobile India release date not part of agenda between Krafton and Nodwin

PUBG Mobile India's return has been hanging in the balance for a long time now. And Krafton Inc. which is the original licensee of PUBG Mobile, took over from Tencent Games after the flaring up of anti-China sentiments which got the game banned in India in the first place.

Krafton has since made it clear that it is doing all it can to bring back PUBG Mobile in India. And Krafton recently made Rs 164 crore of equity investment into Nodwin Gaming in order to improve esports in the country, which it claims is unrelated.

But the underlying question among all this was how soon will PUBG Mobile be returning to India. And to that end, it seems like the company still has not made much progress.

In a recent IGN India report, the publication asked Nodwin parent company Nazara, Managing Director and Founder Nitish Mittersain if there was any conversation around bringing back PUBG Mobile to India during the investment meeting. Mittersain said that PUBG Mobile was not part of that conversation.

Mittersain spoke about the impact of Nodwin’s partnership with Krafton and the esports projections with PUBG Mobile ban and said, "We believe that the esports market in India is going to grow very large and we’re right at the infancy of that market. We’re starting to see green-shoots of how that market can be. Krafton is a gaming giant from South Korea and South Korea is the birthplace of such businesses like esports and they have immense experience and scale on how such businesses have evolved in South Korea and how it can evolve in India."

He went on to mention that the fate of PUBG Mobile in India is not a point of contention in the relationship between Nazara and Krafton. He even mentioned that Krafton has just as much to learn from Nodwin as Nodwin does from Krafton.

This along with the response Sean Hyunil Sohn, Head Corporate Development at Krafton suggest that PUBG Mobile's return to India is not on the cards at the moment.