Free Fire India ban date, reason, origin country and more revealed

Free Fire has found its spot in the very competitive mobile battle royale industry, where it competes directly with huge names like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile. However, India's ban on 'Free Fire' may change the equation since the title was the country's second most downloaded game and a game with the most significant consumer spend in 2021.

However, there were similar speculations even before the ban, as the title was first removed from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Moreover, users utilizing specific cellular networks also reported problems accessing the game starting from February 12.

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Free Fire India ban details

Ban date and reason

The battle royale title was banned by the Government of India on February 14, 2022. However, the game has not been available on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store since 12 February 2022, which confused the player base.

Over the last few years, the government has banned 200+ applications over multiple ban waves due to security issues. This time around, reports have indicated that Garena's popular title, along with 54 applications, have been suspended due to the same underlying reason.

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Origin

Garena have developed the game (Image via Garena)

Garena and 111dots studio developed Free Fire, and the former is one of the subsidiaries of Sea Limited headquartered in Singapore, while the latter is a Vietnamese studio.

Garena was founded in 2009 (rebranded to Sea in 2017), and the battle royale title is a marquee game that has seen tremendous popularity throughout the world. They also offer titles such as League of Legends and Call of Duty Mobile in selected countries.

Following its successful and extensive testing, the Singapore-based company released an improved version in 2021, called Free Fire Max. In an interesting twist, this version of the application has not been included in the list of recently banned applications.

It is worth emphasizing that Tencent does have an 18.7% stake in Sea Limited even after selling stakes worth $3 billion earlier this year.