Earlier in the last year, PUBG Mobile along with 117 apps was banned in India because of the geopolitical conditions continuously taking place with China. Therefore, Krafton has claimed to cut off ties with Tencent Games because they wanted to make the game work out with the government. They have reportedly committed to investing a sum of around $100 million. They had also made a statement that the privacy and security of Indian player data is now a top priority. After the release of the open beta of the game in India, IGN India has recently pointed out as a part of an investigation, that the data of Battlegrounds Mobile India players are being directed to the China server.
Developments in Battlegrounds Mobile India
Recently, IGN India has come up with some big news for the players of Battlegrounds Mobile India. They have made a statement, in a condition of anonymity, that the data sent and received by the Battlegrounds Mobile India APK are from China Mobile Communications servers in Beijing, the Tencent-run Proxima Beta in Hong Kong, as well as Microsoft Azure servers located in the US, Mumbai, and Moscow.
They were able to come up with this decision by making an installation of a data packet sniffer app on an Android device, which helped the team to know about the servers the device has matched with. After completing an entire match, the team searched to find out one of those servers and spotted a server which was a Chinese state-owned company. The server spotted a server in log 36.152.4.34 and disclosed that it was ruined by the Chinese Mobile Communications Corporation, having a location in Beijing, China. The team has also provided proofs that clearly the log at 36.152.4.34.
It is also a fact that during the booting of Battlegrounds Mobile India, the game pings a Tencent server which again marks that there could be still some association. Although, the game states that the information of the players will be stored in the servers in Singapore and India, but in the case of legal requirements, they may happen to transfer the player’s data to other countries as well. The sources used by the team were liable enough to gather up the information related to Tencent as well:
- http://astat.bugly.qcloud.com (Qcloud is a cloud computing platform processed by Tencent)
- http://down.anticheatexpert.com (Tencent’s anti-cheat solution)
Growing Geo-Political conditions in India
The leaders of BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), as well as Congress, have stood with the opposition of removing the game from the Google Play Store. This was right after the app had made a recent Beta Release in India. The last week saw the Confederation of All India Traders joining this opposition. They have also stated that the Indian employees of Krafton were working on a game, while China’s Tencent worked in the country.
Moreover, the Play Store Package name consists of the phrase ‘PUBG Mobile’, which can bring up the fact that its $22.4 million investment in the esports company Norway is just a security threat and Tencent is being the second-largest stakeholder with the stake of 15.5 %.
Final Thoughts
From the proof provided by the investigating team, it seems that China still has a role to play in the game. The IGN India team has also reached out to Krafton for getting an update about the same. It may happen that the company would respond as earliest. The company had been silent when the issue of racism in the Battlegrounds Mobile community had taken a rise, despite the continuous request being sent to the India boss Aneesh Aravind and Chairman CH Kim of Krafton.
What are your thoughts on the data of Battlegrounds Mobile India being sent to the China server? Let us know in the comments below.
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