PUBG: Battlegrounds has been banned in Afghanistan. The Taliban PUBG ban will take effect within the next three months and has been instated because the game is apparently "promoting violence", which...well...I'm sure I don't need to point out the blinding irony of that statement.
What's the reason for this Taliban PUBG ban?
Per the South Asia news platform South Asia Index on Twitter, this Taliban PUBG ban has been instated because the game is "promoting violence", which, to state the obvious, seems a little rich coming from the Taliban. According to the Khaama Press, the ban will take effect within the next three months. The Taliban also says the game is leading youths "astray".
Supposedly, the decision, which was made by the Afghan Ministry of Telecommunication, also includes a ban on social media platform TikTok, which must take effect within the next month. The PUBG ban actually dates back to April, but the Afghan government has now reached a decision regarding when, and how, it should be implemented.
Afghanistan won't be the first country to ban PUBG. In September 2020, India banned the game's mobile iteration, a decision the country's government says it took in order to protect its citizens from Chinese data intrusion. Iraq's PUBG ban from back in 2019 is perhaps closer to the one the Taliban has instated, as that country banned the game (along with Fortnite, strangely) for "societal and moral threats".
What's next for PUBG in Afghanistan?
It's not clear what Krafton and PUBG intend to do next when it comes to Afghanistan and the Taliban. In 2019, Tencent replaced the Chinese version of PUBG with a patriotic alternative titled Game for Peace. It's hard to imagine that something similar could be on the cards for Afghanistan, though, given that the government's principal opposition to the game appears to be its violent nature.
While it's true that games are banned around the world for many reasons, there's a particularly rich irony in the Taliban, which cannot exactly be described as "pacifist", banning a game due to its violent content. Hypocrisy notwithstanding, within the next 90 days, PUBG will be a thing of the past in Afghanistan.
