Garena Free Fire, the battle royale game that was amongst the mobile apps and games that the government banned on Monday, is still available for download in India through Samsung’s Galaxy Store. In addition to Free Fire, AppLock developed by DoMobile is available from the Samsung store, without any restrictions. The ban imposed by the IT ministry resulted in the removal of Free Fire, AppLock, and other 52 apps from Google Play and Apple’s App Store in the country on an immediate basis.
As initially spotted by 91Mobiles, Garena Free Fire is available for download through the Galaxy Store that comes preloaded on Samsung devices.
Gadgets 360 was able to independently verify the existence of Free Fire on the Galaxy Store.
Once installed, the game is available for playing, without any restrictions. Users can also install its updates from the Galaxy Store.
Alongside Garena Free Fire, the Galaxy Store has AppLock as at least one other app from the list of apps and games that were banned on Monday.
Garena Free Fire (left) and AppLock (right) both are available for download through the Galaxy Store
Gadgets 360 has reached out to Samsung for a comment on the matter and will update this article when the company responds.
Although the government has banned the 54 additional apps and games on “security threats” grounds, most users who have these apps and games installed on their devices are still able to use them.
This is unlike the previous series of bans where the game developers were ordered to completely shut down their servers. Telecom operators and Internet service providers (ISPs) were also directed at the time to implement network access restrictions for users to access services that are a part of the banned apps and games.
People familiar with the development told Gadgets 360 that telcos and ISPs were not informed about implementing any such restrictions this time.
Garena in a brief statement on the matter said that it is working to address the situation and apologised to its users for any inconvenience.