The Indian Government has released a list of 54 new applications that have been officially banned in the country. This list includes several “clones” or replicas of previously banned Chinese apps and Garena Free Fire has been added to it as well.
Several Chinese apps were initially banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology(MeitY) of India and this action was first taken in 2020. After several ban waves, the total number of applications restricted in India has reached more than 270 till date.
The list of 54 new applications that are banned in India are as follows:
The Twitter handle of ET Now first reported that GoI had banned around fifty new applications and according to the list, Free Fire has is under the banhammer as well.
Free Fire was delisted from Apple App Store yesterday and soon afterwards, it was removed from Google Play Store as well. Some players also reported that their game was not working very well and they were facing issues while logging in.
It was initially speculated that this was due to the lawsuit filed against Garena by Krafton Inc. for allegedly copying PUBG and its characteristics.
Battlegrounds Mobile India is apparently safe in this ban wave. Its previous iteration, PUBG Mobile was banned in India for more than a year but BGMI was not included in the list of recently banned apps.
BGMI might be safe due to the fact that 2022 Asian Games are right around the corner and PUBG Mobile is a medal event. Every participating nation will be sending their own team at this first ever official Asian Games esports event and considering the fact that India is the household of some of the best PUBG Mobile rosters in the world, the game might have swerved past the banhammer this time.
