ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Friday accepted a petition against a government ban on the hugely popular online game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG, and ordered the country’s telecommunications regulator to immediately unblock the game.
The court order, which also asks the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to explain reasons behind the ban, comes just hour after the regulator said it had held a “detailed hearing” and decided that PUBG, which was banned on July 1, would remain blocked in the country.
PTA has called the game addictive, a waste of players’ time and said it had an adverse effect on the mental and physical health of the country’s youth.
The PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds video game is seen in this illustration photo November 22, 2017. (REUTERS)
PUBG, made by South Korean firm Bluehole Inc, is a survival-themed battle game that drops dozens of online players on an island to try and eliminate each other. It was launched in 2017 and has a huge global following.
“PTA has decided that online game Players’ Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG) remains blocked,” the regulator said in a tweet early on Friday. “The decision has been made by the Authority after a detailed hearing conducted in PTA on July 9 on the directions of the Lahore High Court.”
The regulator said it had approached PUBG management to share data about the game’s sessions and users in Pakistan and controls that could be applied.
“However, response from PUBG is awaited,” PTA said.
PTA said this week it had banned the Singaporean live-streaming app Bigo over “immoral, obscene and vulgar content” and issued a “final warning” to Chinese video sharing platform Tiktok for “similar” reasons.
On July 14, a petition was filed in the Lahore High Court, the highest court in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab, seeking a ban on Tiktok “for the sake of securing wellbeing of the people of Pakistan.”
The court has yet to accept the plea and begin hearing the case.
