BGMI — or Battlegrounds Mobile India — is now available to download via the Google Play store in India. The game, which was banned by the government of India last year, can be preloaded on Android smartphones before it is re-launched in India next week. Developer Krafton has confirmed that the game will be playable in India starting on May 29. The popular battle royale game has been granted a three-month “trial approval” in India, MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said earlier this month.
Krafton announced on Saturday that Battlegrounds Mobile India was available to preload via the Google Play store. While the game can be download — or updated, if it was previously installed — it won’t playable until May 29, when the game is re–launched. Meanwhile, iOS users do not currently have the option to preload the game on their smartphones. Gadgets 360 was able to confirm that the game was available to download via the Play Store.
Earlier this month, Krafton confirmed that BGMI would soon be available in India, nearly a year after it was banned in July last year. The game quickly hit the 100 million user mark in the country a year after it was launched in 2021 as the successor to the popular PUBG Mobile — one of many apps and games that remain banned in the country.
The game was available to download for some Android users over the past week, but those who downloaded the game reported that it was not functional and the app displayed an error that the servers were not online. The game is also said to have made adjustments including the addition of restrictions on play time, while the colour of blood has been changed from red to blue or greed.
It is worth noting that BGMI has currently been granted a three-month “trial approval” to operate in the country, according to MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Krafton has complied with issues of server locations and data security, and the government will keep a close watch on other issues like user harm and addiction over the next three months before a decision is taken, he added.