Garena Free Fire ban: Singapore response, official statement, and more

Free Fire's ban has been a major setback for the esports scene in India and the game's publishers Garena. The Singapore-based tech conglomerate, Sea Limited (Garena's parent company), encountered a drastic dip at the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). Many content creators have also been affected in India due to the Free Fire ban.

However, the MAX variant of the game is still working in the country.

The inclusion of Garena's survival shooter in the ban list of 54 apps was quite surprising as most of the targeted applications were of Chinese origin. Although Garena has a Chinese connection by way of Tencent's investments, the former is headquartered in Singapore. Interestingly, the ban has also prompted the Singaporean government to raise concern with its Indian counterpart.

Read on to learn more about the recent developments surrounding the game's ban in India.

---

Singaporean government reached out to their Indian counterpart after the Garena Free Fire ban

Reportedly, Sea Limited's share prices plunged by an enormous 18.56% after the ban on the game (Image via Sportskeeda)

Garena's flagship battle royale game doesn't have any direct Chinese connection like most other applications on the ban list. Other apps that have been banned in India either had Chinese roots or were clones of previously blocked applications.

The reason cited for the Indian government's decision was related to security. The banned applications allegedly collected and shared sensitive user data back to their servers in China. However, as previously mentioned, Free Fire is based in Singapore.

A recent report by Reuters revealed that Singapore flagged Indian authorities regarding the ban on Garena's BR shooter. As mentioned in the exclusive report, the reason behind this approach was to receive more clarity on the ban while also raising concern in Sea Limited's favor.

The concerns were related to the game's ban being "unintentional" as it is headquartered in Singapore. Reuters also reported that Sea Limited had approached the concerned authorities in India after the ban was announced. They have also given their official statement to Reuters on the matter:

"We do not transfer to, or store any data of our Indian users, in China."

Interestingly, Garena seems pretty focused on running their operations as they subtly tweaked the bio (or about) sections of the game's Indian social media handles to the official "Garena Free Fire MAX IND."