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Battlegrounds Mobile India’s beta version went live on the Google Play Store today for a limited number of participants on a first-come-first-served basis. I tried the beta version out and here are ten things I found out during our initial testing.
Battlegrounds Mobile India’s beta version is basically a near-identical replica of PUBG Mobile, except the name. The game’s UI (user interface), maps, weapons, skins and a lot of other data including gameplay settings are exactly like the options found on PUBG Mobile.
Gameplay modes are also the same, and players can play classic matches, arena mode, TDM (team deathmatch) and more. All gameplay elements like the driving of vehicles, how guns work and building structures are all straight from PUBG Mobile.
Users will see a new loading screen when starting the game which makes sure that there is no mention of Tencent anywhere. Instead, players will now see a big Krafton logo.
One of the burning questions around Battlegrounds Mobile India ahead of its launch was whether the game will allow players to transfer their account data from PUBG Mobile, allowing all their skins, emotes and other unlockables to show in the new title.
The good news is that the game will allow a transfer of data from your older PUBG Mobile account. The bad news is that you can carry over your data only if your previous PUBG Mobile data was synced with a Facebook or Twitter account. Google Play Games logins will not be supported, at least for now.
New data privacy terms and conditions are visible the moment you open up Battlegrounds Mobile India. The new terms suggest that the game’s data will be served in ‘secure cloud servers in India/Singapore’, among a lot of other pointers.
This point is important and may play an important role in the ongoing debate over banning the title. PUBG Mobile. Note that PUBG Mobile was banned in India last year over data privacy concerns with Tencent and one of the major aspects that were an issue was the data of Indian players being taken overseas.
On transferring our PUBG Mobile account over to Battlegrounds Mobile India, we noticed that the data carried over doesn’t include your friend list. Hence, any friends you had in PUBG Mobile will have to likely be re-added in the new game. Until then, you will not see any friends in the ‘Friends’ box.
Another thing we noticed was that once you successfully transfer your data from PUBG Mobile to Battlegrounds Mobile India, there is no way to actually play PUBG Mobile. Even if you open the older game using unofficial methods like VPN, you will meet an error suggesting that user data has already been transferred to a separate version of the game.
Players will also see a new pop up when beginning the game, asking them if they are above the age of 18. If not, the game will impose time restrictions and will allow limited access to Battlegrounds Mobile India for a certain number of hours per day. However, this setting can also be changed in the game’s main settings section.
Players will also be met with a new tutorial mini-game once they start playing Battlegrounds Mobile India, targeted at new players. This includes a training routine that will explain how basic game mechanics like movement, weapon-picking, weapon-switching and weapon add ons will work.
We noticed in the game’s settings in Battlegrounds Mobile India was that there was no option to select red colour effects for blood. In PUBG Mobile, users could choose between red and green effects. However, here it seems players will only be able to choose between green and yellow effects.
Most graphic settings from PUBG Mobile are also carried over to Battlegrounds Mobile India. Hence, users can still choose between smooth, balanced, HD. HDR and Ultra HD graphics, if their phone supports the same. The best combination you can get out of the game right now is either HDR+ Extreme frame rate or Ultra HD+ Ultra frame rate.
