If you love mobile battle royale games, chances are you’ve picked up on the new Sigma title that had gamers shooting their hearts out in arenas. I hope you enjoyed the show, as Garena has officially shut it down along with its servers. Even Google Play removed the game from its store, despite the 600,000 downloads.
What did it do wrong? Why did Garena Free Fire make sure it was removed? Should we expect to see Sigma Battle Royale back in app stores? Let’s explore all these exciting questions!
What is Sigma Battle Royale?
Studio Arm Private Limited is the creator of Sigma Battle Royale. It’s a third-person battle royale shooting game where you drop into a zone, find loot and weapons, and try to eliminate other players. It’s a popular concept among many mobile, PC, and console games, such as PUBG, Call of Duty Mobile, CoD Warzone, and, of course, Garena Free Fire.
Sigma had two modes. The first was the actual Battle Royale, where 50 players faced each other in combat to eliminate each other. For the second, four players in a team fought against another four players. The game was still in early access, with more modes to come.
Why was Sigma so popular?
The reason so many gamers turned to Sigma Battle Royale lately was due to its file download size. Garena Free Fire pulls a hefty 600 MB, which is massive for low-end phones and tablets. Even Call of Duty mobile is just over 2 GB once you download all the assets within the game.
Sigma only came in at about 280 MB, and yet, it still delivered an exhilarating battle royale experience. It’s easy to see why gamers were leaving games like Garena Free Fire to play this newbie in the gaming industry. I guess that’s why they finally decided to take action.
The Garena Free Fire copyright infringement
To make sure no more gamers left Garena to move to Sigma, the company decided to take action. You see, most of the assets in Sigma look exactly like Garena. There are also many gameplay elements that look similar. Some players even go as far as calling it Garena Free Fire Lite. With too many aspects looking like Garena, Google took the claim as fact and removed Sigma from the Play Store.
Was it so wrong? The copycat effect
It’s ironic that Garena would take this action. It actually launched as an alternative to PUBG Mobile back in the day, taking up less storage space than its inspiration. Sure, it didn’t copy as many aspects as Sigma did, but the reason so many gamers turned to it was its low storage space and memory usage. They could play Free Fire on low-end devices.
As with most games that become popular, Garena Free Fire grew in size as seasons passed and more content joined the party. It reached a point where even low-end devices struggled to play it. You also needed way more storage space than before. Enter the copycat effect.
I don’t really blame Studio Arm Private Limited for seeing this exciting opportunity. Here are gamers complaining they can’t play Garena anymore due to the rising requirements. Sigma was the solution that many players were looking for, so they struck gold. The only real issue is that they copied too many assets that look similar to Free Fire, giving Garena a powerful way to eliminate the competition.
Sigma servers are down
Not only can’t you find the game on Google Play Store, but Sigma servers are officially closed. That means you won’t be able to play online, even if you find an alternative place to download the apk. All you’ll get is a file that installs and does nothing, and there’s a good chance it may have some malware on it.
Will Sigma Battle Royale make a return?
One of the top questions that gamers have is if Sigma Battle Royale will make a return. I genuinely believe there’s enough interest in the game that the developers will find a way to change the assets enough not to look like Garena Free Fire. After all, you just need to change the appearance of characters, weapons, and locations with a few tweaks to the gameplay. Right?
With over 600,000 downloads, it would be a tragedy if Sigma didn’t return to the Play Store. It’s not like Google has banned them forever. All they need to do is make sure they eliminate the copyright violations, and they should be good to go. Perhaps they can even make some agreement with Garena to keep it as a lite version of Free Fire with some royalties.
Can you still find Sigma apk downloads?
I’ve looked online, and there are still a few sites offering Sigma Free Fire apk files. They’re probably not picked up on what’s happened and forgot to remove the download file. Either that, or they’re banking on all of you trying to check out what the fuss is all about. I recommend not downloading it until this matter has been sorted out and a new version is released.
