Garena Free Fire is an older arena shooter that aped PUBG's gameplay a year before PUBG Mobile was released on mobile platforms. As you can imagine, an arena shooter from 2017 that was rushed out the door to beat PUBG Mobile to market hasn't aged very well, and so the developer has updated the shooter with new HD graphics and gameplay optimizations. This newly-updated version is known as Garena Free Fire MAX, which is officially available starting today.

The 30-second trailer above offers a quick glimpse of what Garena Free Fire MAX has to offer. As you can see, the graphics have been updated to offer something more in line with the modern shooters on mobile. The Play Store description states, "MAX is designed exclusively to deliver premium gameplay experience," which is odd since this is a free-to-play game that contains in-app purchases that range up to $144.99 per item, which sure doesn't sound very "premium" to me.

WHAT'S NEW

1. Craftland Update - create, build, and share your own map!

2. Clash Squad Season 9 - Begins 09/29 17:00 GMT+8.

3. Airdrop Vending Machine now available in Battle Royale.

4. New Weapon - Treatment Sniper now available in Battle Royale.

5. Weapon Stats adjustments.

6. Character Balancing adjustments.

7. Replay system available for Battle Royale and Clash Squad.

8. Players can now customize the amount of items to drop from bag.

Coinciding with today's launch for Garena Free Fire MAX, there's a new patch available for all versions of the game. This patch is called Booya Day, and much like the patches for all of the other live service arena shooters on mobile, you can expect a new mode and map tweaks along with game optimizations and bug fixes. Of course, if you'd like to dig into the full changelog, you can find it here.

While there are many PUBG clones available on the Play Store, it would seem Garena Free Fire found its audience, and so the original game has racked up over a billion installs. Heck, the new MAX version officially launched today already has 10 million installs. There's no denying the game is popular across the globe, so if you'd like to take a look at what the new MAX version brings to the table, you can navigate to the Play Store listing from the widget below.