Data safety: India blocks Krafton’s game

INDIA's government blocked a popular battle-royale format game from Krafton , a South Korean company backed by China's Tencent, as it was concerned about its data sharing and mining in China, an Indian government source said.

New Delhi used powers it has under India's IT law to block Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), relying on a provision it has invoked since 2020 to ban several other Chinese apps on national security concerns, said the government official and another source with direct knowledge.

The Indian government has not publicly announced the blocking. But the app was removed from Alphabet Inc's Google Play Store and Apple Inc's App Store last week.

The removal of BGMI, which had more than 100 million users in India, comes after the South Asian country's 2020 ban of another Krafton title, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG).

The PUBG crackdown was part of New Delhi's ban of more than 100 mobile apps of Chinese origins, following a months-long border standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Krafton's India CEO Sean Hyunil Sohn told news portal TechCrunch earlier this week that the Indian government had previously noted that PUBG and BGMI are different games, adding that ‘BGMI complies with all guidelines' in India.