Who developed Garena Free Fire? Origin country and developer details

Free Fire has become a worldwide phenomenon, accumulating massive numbers with each passing month. The game's large fan base and viewership demographics are concentrated in India, who have been left devastated by the announcement of the title's ban.

The game has not been available for download from a few days (Image via Google Play)

On 14 February 2022, the game was banned, along with 53 other applications. The title was unavailable for download a few days prior to this announcement as well. However, the servers are still accessible at the moment, with only users on selected networks facing errors when accessing the game.

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Who are the developers of Free Fire and its MAX version?

Free Fire is developed by Garena and 111dots Studios. The former is a Singapore-based online game developer and publisher. Some of the other notable titles published by them includes League of Legends, FIFA Online, and Call of Duty Mobile.

The company is headquartered in Singapore and was founded in 2009 by Forrest Li. In 2017, the company was renamed Sea Limited, with Garena being one of Sea Limited's subsidiaries.

The company is also listed on NYSE - Tencent holds an 18.7 percent share, and recently sold stock worth $3 billion.

Sea Limited's share plummeted at NYSE after the ban (Image via Sportskeeda)

Following the notification of the game's suspension in the country, the share price of the title stumbled by 18.56 percent in a single day. On the other hand, 111dots Studio is a Vietnamese video game developer.

Free Fire is widely successful all across the world and was also named the most downloaded game in 2019, according to App Annie. Following this success, the development of Free Fire MAX, the visually enhanced version, kicked off with a closed beta starting in 2020.

It was succeeded by the global release of this version in 2021, which garnered widespread praise from gamers for its focus on better graphics, while staying true to the core gameplay.

Fortunately for fans, the game's MAX version is not yet included in the list of banned apps yet. As a result, they can still play the title using their existing account. However, the MAX version is available for download on the Google Play Store, but not on the Apple App Store.