The Indian government has recently banned the popular mobile battle royale game, Free Fire. The app is owned by Singapore-based tech group Sea Ltd, with Tencent having a major stake. The game has been developed by 111dots Studio and published by Garena, a Singapore-based games publisher.
For those unaware, the Indian government has recently banned another 53 applications suspected of sending user data to servers in China, which includes certain apps that had resurfaced as clones of previously banned Chinese apps.
In a report by Reuters, sea ltd said that “the company does not transfer to, or store any data of their Indian users, in China.” Singapore, reportedly, reached out to Indian authorities and inquired as to why the app had been targeted in the government’s crackdown on Chinese apps.
The oddity of the ban is more pronounced and confusing as Sea is headquartered in the city-state and therefore the concern by Singapore as to whether the app had been “banned unintentionally”.
Garena, released a statement post-ban of free fire stating: “We are aware that Free Fire is currently unavailable in the Google Play and iOS app stores in India and that the game is currently not operable for some users in the country,” reads the statement. “We are working to address this situation, and we apologize to our users for any inconvenience.”
The Indian IT Department hasn’t yet released a statement regarding the specific ban of Garena’s Free Fire.
The game had gained immense popularity and had a thriving esports culture. Recently it was announced that European esports organization Team Vitality, formed a new Free Fire esports team in India.
As of yet, the game is not available for download either on Google Play Store or the App Store.
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