Garena, a Singapore-based game developer and digital entertainment arm of Sea Group, has announced the return of its popular mobile battle royale game Free Fire in India from September 5.
Garena is relaunching Free Fire in the Indian market a year and a half after the popular mobile title was banned by the government, citing national security concerns. Free Fire, along with 53 other mobile apps, was banned in February last year.
The game was also the most downloaded mobile game worldwide in January 2022 right before its ban in February 2022, with 24 million downloads representing a 51.6% increase over January 2021, according to Sensor Tower data.
Free Fire from Garena was the biggest competitor to Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), the most popular battle royale game in India. The game’s return will ensure healthy competition between the two titles, leading to the overall growth of the video gaming industry.
Garena said it has partnered with Yotta, controlled by local giant Hiranandani, for cloud and other storage needs of local users’ data in the country.
Garena also unveiled Indian cricket superstar MS Dhoni as brand ambassador for Free Fire India. Dhoni will be joined by other sportspersons, such as Team India football captain Sunil Chhetri, badminton ace Saina Nehwal, tennis legend Leander Paes, and Kabbadi champion Rahul Chaudhari.
The company also announced that the flagship Free Fire India Championship (FFIC) will take place in late September.
Talking about the launch, Gang Ye, co-founder, Garena, said, “India is home to very passionate communities of esports enthusiasts and we are excited to be able to support our fans from Bharat with the launch of Free Fire India. We look forward to providing an engaging and highly localised experience for Indian users. We believe our partnership with Yotta will ensure that our users can enjoy the highest quality gameplay experience and benefit from Yotta’s expertise in protecting and securing Indian user data. The Free Fire India Esports Championships is our first step in building out our platform of esports events and activities in the coming months to empower Indian esports athletes to succeed globally.”
Additionally, Free Fire India will offer features and content specifically developed for Indian users, along with a range of features designed to promote safe, healthy and fun gameplay. These include a verification system to enable parental supervision, gameplay limitations and ‘take a break’ reminders.
Talking about the partnership, Darshan Hiranandani, co-founder and chairman, Yotta, said, “Our partnership with Garena is a strong endorsement of the significant progress in the Indian data centre industry. We are pleased to bring our unique data hosting and cybersecurity expertise for the benefit of Indian users. This partnership will foster further India-Singapore technology collaboration.”
The announcement was made at a launch event today by Garena’s co-founder Gang Ye and Yotta Infrastructure’s (Yotta) co-founder and chairman Darshan Hiranandani. Moreover, Yotta will provide the local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure for Free Fire India.
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