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The Indian government is moving to establish a clear legal and regulatory framework for the rapidly expanding digital entertainment sector with the introduction of the proposed Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025. A primary goal of this legislation is ambitious: to position India as a global leader and the “game development capital of the world.”
Key Regulatory Body and Structure
To manage and oversee this new structure, the bill suggests the formation of a national-level regulatory body to be known as the Online Gaming Authority. This Authority would be responsible for enforcing the rules and bringing consistency to the sector.
A major focus of the legislation is to solve a long-standing issue in the industry: the lack of clarity regarding which games are permissible. The bill addresses this by creating two distinct categories:
- Promoted Games: This category includes e-sports and online social games. These are considered “safe” forms of online gaming, and the government intends to actively support and incentivize their development and growth.
- Restricted Games: This category targets platforms running money-based games that rely on chance, essentially operating as online gambling (including card games like poker and rummy). Regulators view these games as having the potential to lure individuals with the promise of quick, large profits, leading to significant financial and emotional harm.
Clarifying Skill Versus Chance
For years, the distinction between a ‘game of skill’ and a ‘game of chance’ has been a legal gray area, which some commercial operators leveraged to run gambling operations while claiming they were skill-based.
The new bill attempts to draw a firm line, asserting that games of pure chance—like a 50-50 coin toss—are rare, and many so-called ‘skill games’ involve elements that tilt them toward chance-based outcomes, thus making them forms of gambling that require tighter control.
Enforcement and Context
The motivation behind the new regulatory push stems from concerns across political and social lines regarding widespread addiction, fraud committed by game operators, and the inconsistent nature of various state laws governing betting and gaming. The illegal online betting market in India is reported to be an industry worth hundreds of thousands of crores, highlighting the need for structured oversight.
Under the new law, penalties will be directed at the operators who run these real-money platforms and those who facilitate the financial transactions. Importantly, the players themselves, often viewed as victims, will not face prosecution.
