Dream11 shares emotional publish after halting real-money gaming enterprise

India’s largest real-money gaming platform, Dream11, just lately shut down its real-money operations after Parliament handed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, earlier this week.

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While saying the choice, Dream11 stated it has “stopped all paid contests” and pivoted totally to a free-to-play social recreation. The firm emphasised it has at all times operated as a law-abiding enterprise and can “fully comply” with the brand new laws.

“When we started this journey 18 years ago as a sports tech company, we were not even 1% of the size of the USA fantasy sports industry. Dream11’s Fantasy Sports product was our way to ‘Make Sports Better’ for all of India,” the corporate wrote in a social media publish.

“With this passion, belief, and the spirit of Made in India, for India, by Indians, we became the largest fantasy sports platform in the world.”

Read Dream11’s publish

The firm added that it will proceed to develop its broader portfolio, which incorporates FanCode, DreamSetGo, Dream Game Studios, and the Dream Sports Foundation. These companies, it stated, will proceed to help its imaginative and prescient to “Make Sports Better” and contribute to India’s ambition of turning into a worldwide sporting superpower.

Dream11 joins a rising record of gaming platforms, together with MPL, Zupee, Probo, My11Circle, and GamesKraft, which have shut down their real-money companies following the invoice’s passage.

The invoice, which now awaits President Droupadi Murmu’s assent, prohibits actual cash gaming corporations from accepting person deposits for video games the place gamers may lose cash. Violations could be punishable by as much as three years in jail and fines of as a lot as Rs 1 crore.

Repeat offences entice enhanced penalties, together with three to 5 years’ imprisonment and fines as much as Rs 2 crore. Banks and monetary establishments facilitating such transactions would additionally face penalties.

“The money-gaming addiction is like drug addiction. The powerful people behind online money games will challenge the decision in courts. They will run social media campaigns against this ban. We have seen the impact of games and how the money is used to support terror,” Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated.