Sea, an e-commerce and gaming tech giant from Southeast Asia, is reportedly shutting down the operations of their game live streaming platform, Booyah, after facing a massive loss of $1 billion in their quarterly earnings. According to the report, Free Fire ban in India has impacted their revenue to a large extent.
Free Fire was one of the most trending games in India, generating a humongous revenue for the tech giant. Since the game was banned, the company has already incurred losses and the number has reached a staggering $1 billion, according to Reuters.
Sea Labs is shutting down several of their experimental projects including the development of game live streaming platform. This will reportedly lead to 30 to 40 people getting laid off from Garena’s team. This layoff is a part of Sea’s plan to increase profitability as per the reports.
Sea is the parent company that owns the gaming giant Garena. A spokesperson from the company said that Sea “made some changes to improve efficiency” in their operations that impact a number of roles, saying it would focus on the “long-term strength of Sea’s ecosystem”.
Garena and Sea collectively have incurred huge losses in the pandemic and the ban adds on to their pile. The share price of Sea plummeted by 72% this year and Garena shared a similar fate with a drop of 39% in quarterly paying users.
Sea has acted on this setback and tried to regain its profitability by taking some moves like warning stakeholders about a worrying situation between Garena and the Indian government in March 2022. They also laid people off at their e-commerce arm,Shopee, in regions like SEA, Mexico and Latin America.
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