7 Interesting Facts About Free Fire That You Might Not Know!

Free Fire has become one of the most popular Battle Royale in both India and the world, however, the story behind the game is much deeper and more expansive than you would believe. In this article, we would list out the top 10 most interesting facts about Free Fire that you might not have heard about.

1 - Who made Free Fire?

Garena Free Fire, otherwise known as Free Fire or Free Fire Battlegrounds, is a battle royale game created and developed by 111 Dots, a Vietnamese Studio. The game was funded and published by Garena, a Singaporean Gaming platform / Company. Garena was previously an online gaming platform developed "by Gamers, for Gamers", but then its developer sold the whole thing for a company -  they have held hegemony on the Southeast Asia online gaming scene to this day.

With HQ based on the SEA region, it is obvious that Free Fire would not be banned even if India/Chinese relations deteriorate. The same thing cannot be said for PUBG Mobile, however, as it is published by Tencent.

2 - When was Free Fire released?

Garena Free Fire was officially released on September 30, 2017, but the beta has been running for a while before that, of course. This is why the official third-anniversary event took August 23 as the game's birthday, despite official dates being more than a month afterward. This place Free Fire amongst the earliest clones of PUBG - it was released half a year after PUBG's debut and 2 months after Fortnite's release, attracting the crowds whose devices cannot run either game.

The fact that it is just an imitation somewhat works against the game, as despite its earlier release, PUBG's Mobile version release on Feb 2018 still blew it out of the water. The game has since recovered from that, of course.

3 - How Popular is Garena Free Fire?

Free Fire is actually getting better and better over time - with 2019 being one of its best years yet.  Overall, the strategy of making the game available for low-end devices works super well to Garena's favor - the game became the most downloaded mobile game globally in 2019, along with various awards from Google Play Store and AppStore. As of November 2019, Free Fire has grossed over one billion dollars worldwide, with 80 million daily active players globally in May 2020.

4 - In which country is Free Fire the most popular?

This might come as a surprise, but India's Free Fire scene is only at the fourth or fifth spot, behind Thailand, Brazil, Russia, and maybe Vietnam or Indonesia. The three SEA countries are pretty much a given, as Garena has had a foothold over there since forever, but Free Fire's popularity in Brazil and Russia are very surprising.

5 - Who's the owner of Garena Free Fire?

Forrest Li, Garena's founder, is the owner of the company and all its games. The guy is a Chinese - Singaporean businessman, with degrees from Shanghai Jiaotong University and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Currently, his net worth is estimated to be 6.8 billion dollars, more than PUBG's founder Brendan Greene. The guy currently holds 45% ownership of Garena.

6 - Which engine was Garena Free Fire based on?

The game was made using the Unity engine, a gaming creation tool created by Unity technologies. This is a rather low tier engine - all games made on it would not look good but would have better performance. That's why Free Fire has a much better frame rate and such than PUBG Mobile from the start. The other reason behind their decision to pick this engine is that their team has decent experience in working with it.

Free Fire is trying to grow out of Unity's limit, of course, with a Max version in development. Free Fire Max is going to have much better graphics than the normal Free Fire.

7 - Facts About Free Fire: Which countries have earned the most from Esports?

Currently, Thailand is on the top with over $350k. The number 2 is Brazil with $250k. India lags behind by a lot, with only $16k. There has been a lot of third party tournaments held in the above countries after all. Garena was going to double down on India in 2020, but due to the complications caused by the Coronavirus, everything has been delayed or canceled.

Interested in more of our articles related to Garena Free Fire? Please check out this post to find out more about the Moco character in Free Fire.