PUBG Mobile

Is PUBG Mobile safe?

PUBG Mobile is safe enough for older teenagers who keep voice chat under control, but it is not a children's game. It is a realistic battle royale shooter, rated 13+ by Apple, in which squads of strangers talk over open voice chat and the shop sells random-reward crates. Its privacy label is lighter than most free games. Its record is not: India has blocked it since 2020, and Pakistan's telecom regulator blocked it in 2020 over its effect on children.

We score it 54/100. That is just below Fortnite (57) and Roblox (55), the two games parents most often compare it with.

Who runs PUBG Mobile and where your data goes

The PUBG name and original game belong to the Korean company Krafton. PUBG Mobile outside China is published by Tencent: the App Store seller is Tencent Mobile International Limited, and the data controller named in the privacy portal is Proxima Beta Pte. Limited in Singapore, with a European branch in Amsterdam.

The privacy label is short. The only data listed as used to track you across other companies' apps is user content, specifically customer support records. Contact info (email and phone number), gameplay content and user and device IDs are linked to your account, and usage and crash data are collected without being linked. Compared with Candy Crush, which lists six tracking categories, this is restrained. The privacy policy, updated in August 2026, describes more than the label: location derived from your IP address, GPS location for features such as finding nearby players, and friend lists imported when you log in through a social network. It also says the company has not sold or shared California users' personal information in the past 12 months.

Governments have looked at it differently. On 2 September 2020 India's IT ministry blocked 118 apps, including PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite, under section 69A of the IT Act. The ministry said it had complaints that the apps were "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data" to servers outside India. That was a national security order, not a data protection ruling, and Tencent was never fined. Krafton later launched its own Indian version, Battlegrounds Mobile India. India blocked that too in July 2022, then approved a three-month trial return in May 2023 after Krafton dealt with server location and data security issues.

Voice chat with strangers

This is where most of the risk sits. Squad modes routinely match players with strangers, and voice chat is part of the game. Anyone in the squad can hear and talk to your child, whatever their age.

Tencent runs a chat safety feature "in certain regions". When a player taps Report, the game records a short snippet of text chat, or converts voice to text or keeps the last 30 seconds of audio. Tencent says it keeps that recording only if it shows a breach of its rules, stores it in Singapore, and may use anonymised copies to train its detection tools. That is a reporting tool, not live moderation, and it relies on the child pressing the button.

Spending and crates

PUBG Mobile is free and earns money from UC, its paid currency, which buys passes, skins and crates. Apple's listing flags loot boxes: you pay for a chance at a rare item rather than the item itself. Limited-time events add pressure to buy before an item disappears. Pakistan's regulator, when it blocked the game on 1 July 2020, cited complaints that it was addictive and harmed children's physical and psychological health. The PTA lifted the block on 31 July after meeting Proxima Beta's lawyers about the controls it had put in place.

How to set up PUBG Mobile for a teenager

1. Turn on purchase approval on the phone: Ask to Buy on iPhone, or a password for every purchase in Google Play. PUBG Mobile has few spending controls of its own.
2. In the game's audio settings, switch the microphone and speaker off, or limit voice to team members your child knows.
3. Link the account to a login you control and keep the email and phone number current, so you can recover it if stolen.
4. Explain that free UC offers, account trades and "cheap skins" sellers are the usual way accounts are lost.
5. Use the privacy portal's request form if you want to see or delete the data held on the account.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (45) and scams and harmful content (45) are PUBG Mobile's weakest factors, reflecting national bans in India and Pakistan and open voice chat with strangers. Transparency and control (60) is helped by a privacy portal with deletion and copy requests and a children's privacy policy. Privacy (55) benefits from a short tracking label and no sale of data, but is held back by location and friend-list collection that the label leaves out.