Garena Free Fire, AppLock available for download through Samsung’s Galaxy Store in India despite ban

Garena Free Fire, the Battle Royale game that was among the mobile apps and games 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 on the Samsung store without any restrictions. The ban imposed by the Ministry of IT resulted in the immediate removal of Free Fire, AppLock and 52 other apps from Google Play and Apple’s App Store in the country.

As initially spotted by 91Mobiles, Garena Free Fire is available for download through the Galaxy Store which 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 to play, 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 another app on the list of apps and games that were banned on Monday.

Garena Free Fire (left) and AppLock (right) are both available for download through the Galaxy Store

Gadgets 360 has reached out to Samsung for comment on the matter and will update this article when the company responds.

Although the government banned the additional 54 apps and games due to “security threats”, most users who installed these apps and games on their devices can still use them.

This is different from the previous round of bans where game developers were ordered to completely shut down their servers. Telecom operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were also told at the time to implement network access restrictions for users to access services that are part of the banned apps and games.

People familiar with the development told Gadgets 360 that telcos and ISPs were unaware of the implementation of such restrictions this time around.

Garena, in a brief statement on the matter, said it was working to remedy the situation and apologized to its users for any inconvenience.

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