PUBG India: The Ban, the Replacement and Where It Stands

PUBG India has not meant "the original mobile app" for years — the app itself has been unavailable there since 2020, and everything since has run through a India-specific replacement.

The original ban

India's Ministry of Electronics and IT banned PUBG Mobile on 2 September 2020, alongside a much larger group of apps, citing concerns over sovereignty and data security tied to Chinese ownership links in the publishing chain.

The replacement

Krafton announced Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) as an India-specific version in May 2021. It launched on Android on 2 July 2021 and iOS that August, built specifically to satisfy the government's data-localisation and ownership concerns.

A second removal

BGMI itself was pulled from the Google Play Store and App Store on 28 July 2022 over a further government order, though existing installs kept working offline. It returned to both stores in late May 2023 after roughly a ten-month dispute.

Where things stand now

BGMI has been continuously available since that 2023 return, with its own active esports scene running domestic tournaments separate from the global PUBG circuit. The original PUBG Mobile app has not returned to India, and there is no indication it will.