India bans 54 Chinese mobile apps

India has banned 54 apps it says are of Chinese origin, including Sea Ltd.’s marquee game Free Fire, citing security concerns, people with knowledge of the matter said, the latest instance of tensions between the two neighbors locked in a protracted border dispute.

According to Bloomberg, Sea’s stock sank more than 9% in pre-market trading in New York. The apps banned by the South Asian nation’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology include those belonging to large China tech firms such as Tencent, Alibaba and NetEase, and are re-branded versions of apps already banned by India in 2020, the people said asking not to be identified citing rules on speaking to the media. 

Sea - founded in Singapore by Chinese-born founders who became Singaporean citizens - has been focusing on building a gaming and e-commerce business globally with early backing from Tencent, the largest shareholder of the company. Sea did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ban on the game Free Fire - Illuminate.

Free Fire, the battle royale shooter often compared with PUBG, is among the world’s most popular mobile games with more than a billion downloads on Google Play. The title has underpinned the phenomenal growth of Singapore-based Sea, Southeast Asia’s most valuable company, and its expansion into markets from Brazil to India. 

The game was the highest grossing mobile game in India in the third quarter of 2021, according to industry tracker App Annie. While a surprise, the ban shouldn’t impact the company heavily given the Asian country accounted for just under 3% of Sea’s overall mobile-gaming net sales in 2021, Bloomberg Intelligence wrote, citing Sensor Tower estimates.