Free Fire missing from Google Play Store, Apple App Store possibly among 54 Chinese apps banned in India

Garena Free Fire is officially banned in India, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology confirms. The full list of 54 banned apps in China has been released.

The Indian government could ban 54 apps of Chinese origin in the country. An ET Now report claims that the Union Government ordered over 50 apps to be banned in India that were clearly a security risk.

While the full list of banned apps has yet to be released, the report claims that these apps are owned by major Chinese companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, and others. Most of these apps have been rebranded as avatars of previously banned apps in 2020. The popular game Free Fire has also been removed from the Google Play store, which may indicate that it was part of the ban.

Free Fire has been removed from the Playstore and here’s why

Popular battle royale game Garena Free Fire has been removed from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in India at a time when many other Chinese apps have been banned.

Neither Garena, nor Google, nor Apple have made any statements about this. It should be noted that Garena is also involved in a lawsuit with PUBG Mobile developers, Krafton Inc, for allegedly copying the game. This could also be a possible reason for the game being removed from the app stores. While these are all possible reasons, we can only be certain of Garena Inc.’s official statement.

The Government of India started banning apps of Chinese origin in 2020 and has since banned over 270 apps in India, including popular apps and games like Tiktok, Alibaba and PUBG Mobile. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology may have issued an order to ban these applications on the grounds that these applications were sending Indian user data to China.

“Access to 54 apps has already been blocked in India through the PlayStore,”an Economic Times spokesperson said. Matey used her authority under section 69a of the Information Technology Act 2000 to enforce the latter order.

“Many apps from the stable of Tencent and Alibaba have changed hands to hide ownership. They are also hosted outside of countries like Hong Kong or Singapore, but the data ends up being sent to servers in China,” the senior official said, citing the reason for the app ban in India.

Many of the apps banned in the wave of 2020 have started launching clone apps in India. PUBG Mobile has relaunched a modified version of Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) in India, and several short video apps owned by major Chinese firms have also been relaunched in the country. Look for more updates on this story.