The Union Cabinet on Tuesday (August 19, 2025) accepted a Bill to successfully prohibit actual cash video games (RMGs) on-line, a multi-billion greenback business that counts fantasy sports activities platforms corresponding to Dream11 and card sport apps, together with PokerBaazi. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025 is now headed to Parliament and is prone to be tabled on Wednesday.
The transfer was not telegraphed in any public method by the federal government earlier than the Cabinet accepted it, with no draft Bill circulated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, as has been accomplished for plenty of notifications and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
A duplicate of the Bill seen by The Hindu lays out a broad definition for “online money gaming,” concentrating on an enormous swath of RMGs in a single fell swoop. Under this definition, “depositing money or other stakes in expectation of winning which entails monetary and other enrichment in return of money or other stakes” comes underneath on-line cash gaming, and is prohibited.
Industry associations representing RMG corporations didn’t have a remark to supply on the proposal and indicated that they might reply formally when the Bill is launched upon its tabling in Parliament. The corporations keep in depth contacts with authorities officers and have resisted the federal government’s earlier makes an attempt to manage them. For occasion, within the months main as much as the GST Council’s determination to extend the tax relevant on RMG deposits, the business registered its opposition on a number of fronts.
At the State degree, business our bodies and particular person corporations have efficiently obtained stays on bans on their operation, corresponding to in Karnataka. Those authorized victories rested on a vital distinction between video games of ability and video games of probability, with solely the latter being recognised by courts as playing, which is a State topic within the Constitution.
Now, that distinction could current an existential menace as an alternative of a lifeline to the business, as on-line gaming has been introduced underneath the executive authority of the IT Ministry, which can implement this prohibition. Under a 2023 modification to the IT Rules, 2021, the federal government sought to carry the business underneath self-regulation, with oversight by an unbiased committee to handle complaints. However, no self-regulatory our bodies (SRBs) had been accepted by the federal government underneath that modification, with officers questioning proposed SRBs’ independence from the corporations they had been presupposed to be overseeing.
The Bill creates a carve-out for the e-sports business, primarily permitting online game tournaments that acquire entry charges to proceed doing so with out falling afoul of the RMG prohibition.