Level up: India’s gamers play to win with homegrown ‘AAA’ titles

Even as the Indian real-money gaming (RMG) sector is feeling the strain of the newly imposed goods and services tax (GST), the country’s game developers are eyeing rising online gamer segments by creating home-grown big-budget titles.

Last month, Mayhem Studios, a Mobile Premier League-backed game developer, announced the closed beta launch of its battle royale game, Underworld Gang Wars (UGW). The game, which has been in the works for the past 18 months and has already amassed 7 million pre-registrations, will be India’s first-ever AAA game — a classification that signifies high-budget, high-profile games typically distributed and produced by large publishers.