Uncertainty Looms Over Free Fire’s India Launch

SUMMARY

Sea is “actively” working with all stakeholders to figure out the “best plan” to relaunch the gaming title in the country, said CEO Forrest Li

Li also said that Sea’s re-entry into India through Free Fire could offer potential upsides to the gaming major in terms of users and bookings

With relaunch in India in limbo since the past two years. Garena Free Fire was among the 54 Chinese apps that were banned in India in February 2022

Uncertainty prevails over the relaunch of battle royale game Free Fire in India. Parent company Sea’s CEO and founder Forrest Li did not offer any clarity on the timeline for the relaunch of the game during the earnings call on Tuesday (May 14).

While answering a query, Li said that the gaming giant was “actively” working with all stakeholders to figure out the “best plan” to relaunch the gaming title in the country. He also added that Sea’s re-entry into India could offer potential upsides in terms of users and bookings.

“For Free Fire relaunch in India, at this moment, we are actively working with all stakeholders, including the regulators, the potential local partners, to figure out what is the best plan to relaunch Free Fire in India. If that is successful, I think that will be a meaningful potential upside in terms of the users and the bookings, considering India is a very, very big market,” added Forrest Li.

The comments come nearly eight months after the relaunch of Garena Free Fire India was first teased back in September last year. However, the plans were then reportedly postponed to refine the gameplay and fully comply with the localisation policies in the country.

Eight months on, there seems to be no clarity on whether the game will relaunch in the country.

Notably, last month, there were reports that said that developer Garena was working with Yotta Data Services to deploy a new server on account of higher throughput and lower redundancy. The company was said to be pulling all stops in terms of testing the performance ahead of a full-fledged launch.

This comes more than two years after the Indian government, in February 2022, banned as many 54 apps for links with Chinese entities. Free Fire was the biggest name in the list and the gaming title disappeared overnight from app marketplaces and was blocked by internet service providers.

The aftermath saw more than $16 Bn wiped out from Sea’s market capitalisation on the bourses in Singapore. While the Centre had flagged security issues with the app, the gaming major quickly made a beeline for the authorities and assuaged the latter that it would localise the server and make the game exclusive in India.

As a result, it partnered with Hiranandani Group-backed Yotta for local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure for the game.