Indian teen spends $21,000 of parent’s money on PUBG

In a shocking incident, a teenager from Punjab has reportedly spent his parents’ hard-earned money on the popular PUBG game. Despite constantly receiving criticisms for being addictive, India has topped the download charts of the game with nearly 24% of total downloads. The teen reportedly spent ₹16 Lakhs ($21,500) to make in-app purchases on PUBG. 

What happened?

Reports from The Tribune say the teenager is based out of a town named Kharar in Punjab. Amidst a global crisis, schools and colleges have resorted to online classes. Using this as an excuse, the boy reportedly told his parents that he was using the mobile phone for online classes.

However, he had purchased a lot of in-game features like virtual ammunition, Royal passes and artilleries. Additionally, the boy made in-app purchases for improving profiles of his teammates also. He reportedly had access to three bank accounts of his parents. 

Life savings gone in no time

His parents, who were unaware of what’s happening, got the details from the bank recently. The report said that the boy was shuffling the amounts between the banks.   This was in order to avoid nil balance in each account. He also kept deleting the messages that were sent to his mother’s mobile regarding the transactions.

The father, who is a government employee said that the amount was saved for his medical expenses and the son’s future. He said that he had split the amounts into his wife’s and son’s accounts, while the majority of it was on his non-salary savings account. Following this, the father has made his son work in a mechanic repair shop to make him realise the value of money.

PUBG Road to Dominance

Despite receiving criticisms for addiction, PUBG has entangled a lot of teenagers by bringing new and exciting features to the game. Reports from last year showed that a 16-year old teen based out of Madhya Pradesh had passed away due to cardiac arrest after playing PUBG for six hours straight.

However, the game has topped the charts in both Apple and Google’s Play Store. Right from its inception, it has attained immense popularity with 734 Million downloads as of June 2020. India which has more young population has contributed to this with a whopping 174 million downloads.

Regarding revenue, PUBG had led the global rankings in March and recent estimates by Sensor Tower says the game has clocked $1.3 Billion revenue for the year of 2020.