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Garena Free Fire Banned: Check all information about the recently banned apps in India – India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has banned a new batch of apps, including the popular battle royale game Garena Free Fire. Free Fire was the #1 mobile battle royale game in India by downloads and revenue in 2021, so this is a huge blow. This is the 5th batch of apps to be banned by MeitY since June 2020. Let’s know more about the recent ban apps.
#ETNOWExclusive | Garena Free Fire banned! Here’s the full list of the 54 banned #Chinese apps 👇@NayantaraRai @AshwiniVaishnaw @Rajeev_GoI @GoI_MeitY @PMOIndia #FreeFire pic.twitter.com/7HzYISp52H
— ET NOW (@ETNOWlive) February 14, 2022
A total of 56 games have been banned since then, primarily from Chinese publishers, due to national security concerns. However, Free Fire is not a Chinese game, it is from Singapore-based Garena. Therefore it is unclear why Free Fire is on this list, among Chinese apps. The govt has not disclosed a reason for Free Fire’s ban at this point.
Garena Free Fire Banned: Check all information about the recently banned apps in India
Interestingly only the standard version of Free Fire is banned. While Google Play removed Free Fire from download, the high-end version called Free Fire Max is still available. Both were removed from the Apple app store. Unclear if Max will be removed from Google Playstore in the future.
Free Fire was huge in India. It had more than 250m lifetime downloads. The game had hit a >$5m Monthly regular users in the country. Large pro esports ecosystem, Strong local marketing campaigns. This will have a notable impact in the same way the PUBG Mobile and Arena of Valor bans initially did.
What’s interesting is that even with 5 batches of bans, primarily targeting Chinese apps, games such as Genshin Impact, Lords Mobile, Top War, and others continue to operate without issue. But perhaps they are next…
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