Sea Ltd. faces almost $1 billion quarterly loss as Free Fire remains banned in India, shuts some projects

Garena Free Fire's parent company, Sea Ltd., plans to halt its popular streaming platform Booyah!, according to multiple reports. The company has reduced its headcount by letting go of 30-40 employees and putting breaks in its development unit. The news, first reported by Reuters, came after the company faced a quarterly loss of a whopping $1 billion.

The Singapore-based company shut down several projects, including blockchain and public cloud projects, and cut many jobs to increase its profitability.

A spokesperson of Sea Ltd. told Reuters that the company had "made some changes to improve efficiency in their operations which would impact several roles for the long term strength of their ecosystem."

The company has also gradually lost $170 billion in market value since October last year. These losses come after the meteoric growth of Sea Ltd. and Garena during the COVID-19 pandemic, where online spending had also increased.

SEA Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest tech company, had 67,300 employees at the end of 2021, twice more than a year earlier, according to the company's most recent annual report.

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Sea Ltd. faced some losses due to the Free Fire ban in India

The ban on Free Fire in India has put a slump in the country's booming gaming and esports market in the country. Stakeholders related to Free Fire have had to incur major losses over a short period of time. Before the ban, several Indian content creators used to stream on the Booyah app. The platform has hosted several tournaments with huge prize pools.

Earlier on February 14, 2022, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTy) banned the game along with 53 other apps. The ministry argued that these apps prove to be a threat to the security and privacy of Indian citizens.

The Singaporean company had earlier incurred losses of $16 billion after the removal of Free Fire from Google Play and the App Store.

With the reopening of offline markets and rising interest rates, Sea Ltd., which had doubled its workforce from 2020 to 2021, is now looking to cut jobs and increase profitability rather than focus on expanding into other countries.

It would be intriguing to see if Sea Ltd. would be able to stop the bleeding through these changes. It also remains to be seen if the game will make its comeback in India. The title remains one of the most popular battle royale games in the region, and an advanced version of the game called Free Fire MAX is still available for millions of its players.