As of now, Free Fire, along with PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile VN, are among the most played shooting games in Vietnam. Although it was released a long time ago, Free Fire still has a large player base, despite facing many controversies from the community regarding imbalance, pay-to-win mechanics, and some players even claiming that Free Fire is “bloodsucking”. However, no matter how much debate there is, it is hard to deny that this game remains one of the the giant in the Vietnamese survival game genre.
For those who may not know, Garena Free Fire was released for Android and iOS in December 2017 by Garena Studios and developed by 111dots Studio (Vietnam). The game is similar to other mobile Battle Royale titles such as PUBG Mobile and Clash Royale, but it is optimized for low-end smartphones. Each match consists of only 50 players and typically lasts just 10 minutes, much shorter than PUBG Mobile, which allows Garena Free Fire to reach a wide audience worldwide.
Since it still has a relatively “huge” player base in Vietnam, any unexpected issues arising without prior notification from Garena will face a strong backlash from the community. For instance, yesterday, many Free Fire players encountered a incident considered relatively serious.
Specifically, on May 7, 2020, many Free Fire players were unable to log into the game and received various notifications. Some players received a notification stating “Invalid verification code, please log in again”. Others received a “Network connection error”. Many players even feared they had lost their accounts, leading to unnecessary anxiety among a large number of gamers.
What’s noteworthy is that this was not an issue affecting just a few players, but many gamers faced this problem. This sparked significant outrage within the already extensive Free Fire community. It is known that this was an unexpected issue for Garena, and the official Free Fire fan page had to post a public announcement to soothe its community.
Accordingly, on the evening of May 7, the Garena Free Fire fan page released the following statement: “We have received information about the unsuccessful login issue. The development team is working hard to address the problem… Free Fire sincerely apologizes for this issue…”
Of course, a simple apology was not enough to calm the community, which was already “boiling” yesterday. Within less than three hours, this post recorded a significant number of “angry” reactions as well as comments from players. Most of them demanded that Free Fire compensate them with gifts, while a considerable number of others criticized and blamed the operational team for allowing such a serious incident to occur without prior notification.
Later, on the night of May 7, Garena resolved the login issue with an announcement that there would be compensation for players. Hopefully, in the future, Free Fire will not encounter any unexpected issues like this one to avoid facing a backlash, which has been quite fierce from the community over recent times.