Battlegrounds Mobile India Data-Sharing Issue With China Fixed: Report

Battlegrounds Mobile India has been under the scanner ever since its early access went live a few days ago. It was reported to have been sending and receiving data to/ from servers in China, Hong Kong, Moscow, and the US. It was also reported to be pinging a Tencent server in Beijing when booting up. Krafton had announced to cut ties with China-based Tencent last year to revive the game for Indian users, and these new reports suggested that the company was not keeping its promise. Now, Krafton appears to have released a small update to fix the China server issue.

IGN India first reported about Battlegrounds Mobile India hosting data in servers across China and the other countries. It now reports that the game will not be sharing information with China servers anymore when you play the game. A small automatic update that is downloaded when you boot the game seems to have fixed the issue. Once that update is applied, Battlegrounds Mobile India prompts you to restart the game and log back in.

This update reportedly prevents any data from going to a Chinese server. IGN India ran a packet sniffer while playing through two matches after the update was applied and noticed that Battlegrounds Mobile India was not notifying a single Chinese server. The report says that the only time a Chinese server is pinged is when app data was deleted. This could be due to the account migration feature that enabled PUBG Mobile users to carry over their in-app purchases to Battlegrounds Mobile India.

In its privacy policy, Battlegrounds Mobile India says personal information will be stored and processed on servers located in India and Singapore, but it may transfer user data to other countries to operate the game service or to meet legal requirements. This new update will reportedly ensure that no Chinese server is pinged for Indian users.

Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has written a letter to Union IT and Communication Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to demand a ban of Battlegrounds Mobile India in the country. It even urges Google to delist Battlegrounds Mobile India from Play store.