Garena Free fire banned along with 53 other apps in India

The ministry of home affairs has recommended the ban of 54 Chinese mobile apps from the google play store and apple app store. The apps vanished from the apps store shortly after and of the apps to take the ban hammer is the beloved BattleRoyal game Garena Free Fire. The interesting fact is that the Game is made by Singaporean developers with the only connection to the Chinese side is Tencent, which is a game published based in china.

Some of the newly prohibited apps include apps like Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, Viva Video Editor, AppLock, etc, which are clones or rebrands of many of the over 300 apps affiliated with Beijing that New Delhi has banned since mid-2020 amid escalating geopolitical tension among the two neighboring nations over border dispute. It seems the case of Garena Free Fire ban is eerily similar to the ban of PUBG mobile another victim who experienced the same faith.

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History of app bans in India

This is not the first time for the Indian Government to Ban certain apps. Everything started in Mid-2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology formally issue a notification banning the operations of more than 300 apps in India under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. Among many apps which were banned the most notable was the ban of TikTok and the popular battle royale game PUBG mobile. Other popular apps on the list were Shareit, Xiaomi Mi Community, Clash of Kings, Weibo, WeChat, Likee, etc.

In total 3 lists were released banning multiple famous apps. Looking at history, the ban on the Game was inevitable.

What Happened?

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology passed an order under Section 69A of the IT Act, to Google and Apple to pull apps mentioned in the list from their respective AppStore. The Google spokesperson in an interview said “On receipt of the interim order passed under Section 69A of the IT Act, following established process, we have notified the affected developers and have temporarily blocked access to the apps that remained available on the Play Store in India,” The Indian government expressed Security concern as the reason for the ban of the app, which falls in line with the previous bans of popular apps.

Game developers statement on Garena Free Fire ban

The game developer has issued a statement that they are aware of the situation and working to resolve the issue with the Indian government. What’s interesting is that seems the game developers were completely unaware of the news and were as shocked as us the gamers. Even if the ban is lifted and the game come back to the play store or app store, it is unclear if the game will make comeback in the gamers heart.

Can you still play the Game?

Well yes, sorta. If you did not own the app and want to download it now, you are out of luck. The game has completely vanished from the Play store and app store. But those who already owned the game can play it but in moderate succession. The game connectivity to the Indian servers is extremely unreliable now and they frequently disconnect. You can use VPN to connect with servers outside India but will be faced with high ping, worst response times, and many more issues.