Garena Free Fire Game Reportedly Removed From Play Store & App Store Post Indian Government’s Ban for 54 Chinese Apps

The Indian government has banned 54 Chinese apps due to threats to the security and privacy of citizens. These apps reportedly belong to Chinese companies like NetEase, Tencent, Alibaba. In June 2020, the government had banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, WeChat, Helo and more. Now, 54 more apps have been banned. The Ministry of Electronics and IT claims that they were transferring sensitive data of Indian citizens to servers in China. Centre to Ban 54 Chinese Apps Posing Threat to National Security.

Post the ban of 54 Chinese apps, Garena's Free Fire game has been removed from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Several Indian players are also reporting login issues on Free Fire's official Discord channel. Tencent reportedly owns over 25 percent shares in Free Fire's publisher Garena. So this could be the reason, the game is not available on Play Store and App Store. However, at the time of writing this article, the Garena Free Fire Max is available for download on Play Store.

When PUBG Mobile was banned in India in 2020, players used VPN to play the game. So users might also use the same method to play the Garena Free Fire game, given that the game has a massive player count in India.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 14, 2022 01:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).