Garena's MOU with UP government: What does it mean for Free Fire MAX?

Garena, the maker of Free Fire, has inked multiple MOUs in India, which seems to be the first good news in a long while for fans in the country. Ye Gang, CEO of Sea Ltd, the parent company of Singaporean game developer and publisher, signed the first Memorandum of Understanding, one with the Uttar Pradesh government and the second with the CEO of Yotta, Sunil Gupta.

It is important to understand that Garena has signed a Memorandum of Understanding as part of a strategic collaboration to place Uttar Pradesh at the forefront of esports. Additionally, Ye Gang signed an agreement with Yotta, a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology empaneled Cloud Service Provider, to receive data center and cloud hosting for Garena’s services in India.

With these circumstances, rumors about Free Fire’s return to the country are rampant. These have been further driven by the content creators with videos on this aspect on multiple platforms. So, the question arises - what does this MOU hold for the future of the game or its enhanced version?

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What does Free Fire’s developer Garena MOU with UP government and Yotta mean for the game’s future?

After signing the MOU, Navneet Sehgal, the Additional Chief Secretary, Sports and Youth Welfare Government of Uttar Pradesh, told the media that Garena would use the services of Yotta data centers in Noida to provide esports services.

He further said that the Singapore-based company would host an international-level esports tournament in Uttar Pradesh in 2023, aiming to develop and exhibit Indian talents on the global stage.

Given that Free Fire is one of the flagships offering from Garena, many content creators speculate the tournament could be of the battle royale title while the game’s services could resume once again in the country.

They might not be wrong in this conjecture since Free Fire was blocked in the country due to data security. Partnering with Yotta, which has a hyperscale data center in Greater Noida, could solve the problems, and the game might be back. The Hiranandani group company has the capacity to protect the sensitive data and personal information of Indian service users. However, without any official announcement, this is just another speculation.

Additionally, Diptanshu Saini, the co-founder of Chemin Esports, told Sportskeeda that Free Fire was returning to India with the MAX variant becoming the official variant. Later in the Instagram stories, he shared that he was happy to be part of something and couldn’t reveal more about it, suggesting that some work might be in progress on the backend.

The cofounder's story about the title comeback (Image via Diptansu Saini / Instagram)

The MAX version was not on the blocked application list; the game is only available on the Google Play Store. However, the esports tournament has been suspended in India since Free Fire was blocked in February 2022.

Garena has not put out any official word about the battle royale title's return to the country, and it remains to see if any progress is made on this front.