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“It’s definitely going to be challenging and will involve a lot more effort in re-engaging with the users. But the focus will still be to engage with them in the right way,” Vaibhav Das Mundhra, Senior Manager and Game Producer, Garena, explains how reconnecting with users of Free Fire won’t be a smooth ride after the game was blocked by India last year. However, Mundhra remains optimistic about the future of the game, which he says still has a large loyal fan base in India.
Singapore-based Sea Ltd, Southeast Asia’s largest tech firm, is relaunching ‘Free Fire’, a popular battle royale mobile game with a brand new identity and India-centric features. It has roped in Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the face of Free Fire India. He will also feature in the game as a playable character, “Thala”.
“Throughout last year, we made efforts to sort of continuously engage with authorities,” Mundhra tells indianexpress.com on the sidelines of the relaunch of Free Fire in India. Although he did not share the exact details of what changes the Indian Government had asked the company to make to approve the resumption of Free Fire in the South Asian country, Mundhra did mention that the modified version has been developed keeping the local laws and regulations in mind.
In its new avatar, ‘Free Fire India’ will be exclusive to the country. Garena, the company that develops and publishes Free Fire, has partnered with Yotta Infrastructure, a local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure company and says a majority of servers are with Yotta but there are a smaller number of common Garena servers in Singapore.
Free Fire was a widely popular mobile game with a large fan base but got kicked out from India’s iOS and Google Play stores due to “unanticipated government actions.” According to data from Sensor Tower, Garena Free Fire was the most downloaded game worldwide in 2021 across the App Store and Play Store with 218 million downloads on mobile devices. Free Fire was among the 54 applications, mostly of Chinese origin, banned by the Indian government over security concerns in mid-February last year when tensions between Beijing and New Delhi were high following a prolonged border dispute.
Earlier, PUBG Mobile was met with the same fate when the Indian government had ordered to block the game in India. Later, South Korean developer Krafton introduced another battle royale game Battlegrounds Mobile India, popularly known as BGMI, in the country.
Mundhra says the company has made several changes to Free Fire and added many features and content that will appeal to Indian users. The list of add-ons also includes a verification system to enable parental supervision, gameplay limitations and ‘take a break’ reminders. Free Fire India will be available for Indian users from September 5.
But Garena isn’t just looking at relaunching Free Fire in India. Mundhra says the long-term goal is to focus on mobile Esports in an attempt to pivot their plans for staging live competitions in the world’s second-largest smartphone market.
“Esports is something that has a lot of potential, especially in a country like India, where I think the market is still a little bit underserved,” says Mundhra. “We hope to be able to promote Esports in the right way not just at a national level or international level, but also going to college campuses and developing the Esports ecosystem in India.”
Competitive video game playing, more commonly known as Esports, has exploded in popularity in recent years. Thanks to the arrival of streaming services like Twitch and YouTube which are capable of broadcasting players’ video game exploits to thousands of viewers. Competitions are often hosted in large venues, such as arenas, where audiences watch as professional players vie for supremacy. The players and the tournaments can be sponsored by major publishers like Garena, and the battles are often streamed live online with commentary. In the most basic sense, Esports leagues act as a marketing tool to encourage people to play a competitive game like Free Fire. Just like “traditional” sports, Esports players make money from branding, advertising and media deals, raking in millions.
Not all games are made for Esports, though. For example, in Esports, League of Legends has a status as tall as football. Similarly, Garena’s ‘Free Fire’ is a battle royale mobile game that can be played in a multiplayer environment and features a series of competitive match types. Fans of such games want to watch hours of competition, either through streaming services like YouTube or attending live events.
“There is a large part of the audience that actually loves watching [this] Esports content and consuming it that way. Then there’s a segment that plays as well. I think it’s not mutually exclusive…people do both,” he said when asked whether Esports is viewed as a form of entertainment among young users.
In India, Esports is mostly mobile due to the large penetration of smartphones and affordable mobile data. That’s where publisher and game developer Garena comes in which holds mobile Esports events in many parts of the world. When it held the Free Fire World Series in Singapore in 2021, the event featured a US$2 million prize pool. This shows the scale at which Esports events are being organised.
To boost its presence in India’s Esports market, Garena recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uttar Pradesh. The game publisher plans to host an international-level Esports tournament in UP in the month of December. The plan is also to hold the Free Fire India Championship (FFIC) soon and the winners at the Free Fire World Series in Thailand in November.
