Garena Free Fire, a battle royale game that was among the mobile apps and games banned by the government on Monday, is still available for download in India through Samsung's Galaxy Store. Apart from Free Fire, AppLock developed by DoMobile is available from Samsung Store without any restrictions. The ban imposed by the IT ministry resulted in the immediate removal of Free Fire, AppLock and 52 other apps from the country's google Play and Apple App Stores.
As originally spotted by 91Mobiles, Garena Free Fire is available for download through the Galaxy Store pre-installed on Samsung devices.
TechnologyShout is able to independently verify the presence of Free Fire on the Galaxy Store.
Once installed, the game can be played without any restrictions. Users can also install their updates from the Galaxy Store.
In addition to Garena Free Fire, the Galaxy Store has AppLock as at least one other app on the list of banned apps and games on Monday.
Both Garena Free Fire (left) and AppLock (right) are available for download through the Galaxy Store
TechnologyShout has reached out to Samsung for comment on the matter and will update this article when the company responds.
Although the government banned another 54 apps and games, citing “security threats,” most users who had them installed on their devices were still able to use them.
This differs from a previous series of bans that required game developers to shut down their servers entirely. Telecom operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were also instructed at the time to implement network access restrictions to restrict users' access to services that fall under the category of banned apps and games.
People familiar with the development told TechnologyShout that the telcos and ISPs were not told of any such restrictions this time around.
In a brief statement on the matter, Garena said it was working to resolve the situation and apologised for any inconvenience caused to users.