Free Fire removed from App Store and Google Play Store in India

Popular battle royale game, Garena Free Fire has been seemingly removed from the App Store and Google Play Store. The news comes just a month after Krafton, creator of PUBG filed two lawsuits against the company.
Those who already have Free Fire downloaded have been able to play it, albeit with limited success. For the past 24 hours, players have been reporting issues while logging into the game where some technical issues would not let them. The game is currently unavailable to download on either mobile store and in some cases does not even show up while entering the name in the search query.
It is worth noting that the superior version, Free Fire Max is available to download from the Google Play Store at the time of writing, though it is nowhere to be seen on the App Store. Garena has not revealed any specific reason either, so the best bet is to wait until they release an official statement.

Dedicated players have also been worried if the game has been silently banned in India, similar to what we saw with PUBG: Mobile during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. India had banned hundreds of Chinese apps around that time, including TikTok, Weibo, and WeChat.
Garena was recently under fire from Krafton, receiving two lawsuits claiming that they “extensively” copied numerous aspects of Battlegrounds, including the ‘air drop’ feature, game structure, a combination of weapons, and unique items. The company also dragged in Google and Apple into the case for hosting and encouraging Free Fire on their platform. Not much has been heard about that lawsuit besides Garena’s parent company Sea stating, “Krafton’s claims are groundless.”