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Garena Free Fire, one of the most famous battle royale mobile games, has officially been banned by the Government of India alongside 53 other apps. The shocking news has crushed the hopes of fans who were expecting the game's return to the Google Play and App Store after its initial removal.
On 12 February, Free Fire was removed from the app stores of Android and iOS, while many users started reporting login issues. Reportedly, many broadband or cellular networks stopped working for the game, and many speculated the inevitable decision to happen soon.
Deducing possible reason for Garena Free Fire's ban
The esports scene was finally recovering and seeing a rise due to Free Fire's staggering popularity. The ban has proved to be an unfortunate occurrence for the gaming scenario in India yet again. The move to ban Garena's BR shooter was unpredictable and quite sudden.
The scale and amount of this wave of bans are similar to what happened during the infamous TikTok and PUBG Mobile bans. The reasons that the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology cited for the blockage of those applications were related to the nation's security, defense, and sovereignty.
Hence, the reason behind the recent ban of 54 apps in India should be similar. However, most blocked applications are either Chinese or were clones of previously banned apps. Therefore, blocking the popular shooter seems a bit harsh, considering Garena is a Singaporean company.
As of now, fans are awaiting an official statement from Garena's side as the latter has kept mum amid all recent developments. Indian social media handles for the game have also not updated the users regarding the situation.
The only positive to come out of this saga is the availability of the MAX variant, which is still operable in India. Fans can download it from the Google Play Store right now, as there has been no news regarding its ban in India.
Check out the latest Free Fire MAX redeem codes here.
