The highly anticipated release of its battle royale game Free Fire India is being delayed by a “few more weeks,” according to Garena, the gaming division of Singaporean internet giant Sea. The announcement was made on September 4.
The game made a reappearance after being suspended for almost 1.5 years due to national security concerns, and it was anticipated to be downloaded in India starting on September 5. It’s important to note that Garena still provides a more expensive version dubbed “Free Fire Max” that was not halted by the Indian government.
The company stated that it was delaying the release of Free Fire India so that it could provide the “best possible experience to all of our Free Fire India fans” right away.
On August 31, Garena first announced the launch of Free Fire India, appointing MS Dhoni, a former captain of the Indian cricket team, as its brand ambassador.
According to Vaibhav Das Mundhra, senior manager and game producer at Garena, Free Fire India will be a mobile application customized to India with features and content tailored to the country’s market. Additionally, Dhoni will appear in the game as the playable character Thala.
To provide local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure for Free Fire India, Garena had also teamed with Yotta, a Hiranandani Group firm and a cloud service provider with a MeitY impaneled status. To enhance Garena’s product offerings in India, notably in esports, Yotta will manage the personal data of Indian customers on local servers and network connectivity services, the business said.
In addition, Garena had a contract with the state of Uttar Pradesh to promote the growth of eSports in India. The action was taken three months after competitor Krafton received permission from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to restart the India-only app Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) in May 2023 following a 10-month suspension.
Free Fire and BGMI’s return to India is also anticipated to help the nation’s rapidly expanding esports industry, which was negatively hurt by their ban last year. According to Manish Agarwal, founder of Kratos Studios, a community-based gaming platform that goes by the name IndiGG, India presently has over 1 million esports players, and this figure is anticipated to rise with the relaunch of Free Fire. Manish Agarwal also stated that the game is best suited for low-end Android devices.
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