Free Fire has been banned in India

Following currently being eradicated from Apple’s Application Store and the Google Play Retail outlet in India on Feb. 12, No cost Fireplace has reportedly been banned alongside with 53 other individuals apps by the country’s federal government.

According to a record of 54 applications released by neighborhood news channel ET NOW, Free of charge Fireplace has been blocked alongside with a number of other games these types of as Onmyoji Arena, Onmyoji Chess, Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade, and much more.

ANI, a prominent information company in the state, said in a report that the authorities of India has banned the apps for the reason that they posed a “threat to national safety.” The report also reported that the banned apps ended up of Chinese origin.

Free Hearth, even so, is created by Singapore-based mostly Garena. Its parent corporation, Sea Minimal, is also based mostly in the Southeast Asian state and is publicly traded on the New York Inventory Exchange (NYSE).

Garena and Sea have nonetheless to respond to the new progress.

This is not the to start with time India has banned apps in the nation. Considering the fact that 2020, the country’s ministry of electronics and IT has banned additional than 200 programs utilizing section 69a of the Indian constitution’s IT Act. The ministry experienced alleged in a assertion then that the apps ended up engaged in “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ details in an unauthorized method to servers which have spots outside the house India.” As a final result, the apps were banned “in the curiosity of sovereignty of India, protection of India, and stability of the condition.”

While the ministry hasn’t launched any official statement nevertheless, the 54 apps have probably been banned for the exact same motives and below the similar act. On top of that, the principles for blocking the apps beneath this act condition that the banned accounts should keep on being private.

Update Feb. 14 8:55am CT: Garena sent the subsequent statement to Dot Esports by way of an e mail: “We are aware that Free of charge Fireplace is at present unavailable in the Google Enjoy and iOS application suppliers in India and that the video game is at this time not operable for some buyers in the state. We are working to deal with this circumstance, and we apologize to our end users for any inconvenience.”