In a fashion akin to a stealth operation, the Government of India pushed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025 in Parliament because the monsoon session drew to a detailed. This Bill outlawed on-line actual cash video games whereas aiming to advertise the expansion of e-sports and on-line social video games. The Bill was rushed via each Houses with none debate and was not preceded by any consultations with the affected trade or with States, which have jurisdiction over key points of the subject.
Online gaming was a dawn sector in India and had seen vital overseas funding. This sudden ban could have repercussions for overseas direct funding throughout domains. Why would world traders belief India when guidelines flip in a single day, and when the federal government kills one of many few digital industries the place India may lead globally?
The fallout
Online gaming sits on the intersection of expertise, funds, and digital content material — the very sectors India claims to champion below the banner of Digital India. Choking this trade means shutting the doorways on hundreds of expert jobs, slowing down innovation, and discouraging entrepreneurship at a time when the economic system desperately wants all of them.
When job creation in India is pitifully gradual and at a time when the world is investing in gaming as the subsequent digital frontier, this Bill has instantly resulted in great job losses. The gaming sector was on monitor to make use of 1.5 lakh individuals by 2025 — throughout improvement, design, programming, buyer help and analytics. These are exactly the sorts of cutting-edge, high quality tech jobs India wants in its digital economic system. Some of those will survive the ban.
Online real-money video games have been anticipated to generate about ₹17,000 crore in Goods and Services Tax (GST) income for the Union authorities and States. By closing this income, the Centre has unilaterally lower off a vital income supply for States additionally, whereas making a major sacrifice. Why?
The authorities’s central arguments in help of the ban are that on-line actual cash video games have resulted in monetary smash for gamers and resulted in one thing akin to drug habit. That it’s clearly a societal hurt that wanted to be addressed urgently. However, is the ban possible to offer a treatment? Or, would cautious regulation, as being developed in States comparable to Tamil Nadu, present a extra balanced decision? Were there different, presumably higher, methods to curb the unfavourable side-effects of on-line actual cash video games?
Glossing over accountable gaming
Online gaming corporations have been engaged on technological initiatives to establish and forestall problematic gaming. Responsible play instruments exist already and are confirmed globally. These embody age-gating to limit entry to minors, self-exclusion mechanisms, deposit and deadlines, bot-detection techniques, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, and moral promoting requirements. Instead of strengthening such safeguards, the ban abruptly destroys them, leaving gamers extra susceptible than earlier than.
If on-line gaming platforms that complied with taxation and regulation are pressured out, compulsive gamers will inevitably discover a strategy to shift to unlawful apps hosted by offshore or underground networks. Such platforms function past the attain of Indian authorities, pay no taxes, and expose shoppers to fraud and unsafe practices. The authorities is not going to solely lose income but additionally inadvertently encourage the very unlawful playing rackets that it seeks to curb. This ban would simply finish accountability. The actual situation right here is regulatory capability. Instead of constructing robust oversight frameworks which stability public curiosity with non-public revenue, India has fallen again on the blunt instrument of prohibition.
The ban additionally violates constitutional provisions, judicial doctrines and strikes a blow to federalism. Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution grants each particular person the elemental proper to practise any career or enterprise. The ban assaults the very foundations of this proper. With one piece of laws, a thriving trade has been dealt a physique blow. If the priority was in regards to the promotion of playing, the Union authorities ought to have consulted with States as regulation of betting and playing are State topics. The new regulation has already been challenged in courts because it raises a number of questions of constitutional propriety.
A gray zone regarding on-line gaming has been whether or not it constitutes a ‘game of skill’ or a ‘game of chance’. Judicial selections have constantly upheld the legitimacy of video games of ability. States are allowed to manage or ban video games of probability or playing. Good regulation would clear the doubts round this topic.
A center floor exists
Ideally, laws needs to be developed which protects gamers, prevents habit and exploitation, and addresses the priorities of assorted stakeholders and States. The alternative shouldn’t be between prohibition and a free-for-all. There is a center floor: a transparent licensing framework, strict compliance requirements, and a taxation regime that’s truthful however predictable.
Banning on-line actual cash gaming, then again, solely ensures that each revenues and alternatives vanish into the underground economic system, whereas leaving gamers unprotected and susceptible. Time will inform whether or not, via this ban, India has protected its residents or failed them.
M.V. Rajeev Gowda is a former Member of Parliament (Congress). The views expressed are private