A nationwide blanket ban on real-money gaming (RMG) platforms in India is now all however sure after The Promotion and Regulation of On-line Gaming Invoice, 2025, was handed by the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, August 21, by way of a voice vote. The passage of the Invoice took somewhat over an hour. The Lok Sabha had cleared the Invoice on Wednesday. It can turn out to be legislation as soon as it receives the President’s assent.
The Invoice seeks “to ban the providing, operation, facilitation, commercial, promotion and participation in on-line cash video games,” focusing on firms behind fantasy sports activities and card video games that permit customers to stake cash for rewards with the danger of losses.
The sweeping ban not solely doubtlessly places an finish to the authorized cowl secured by RMG companies by way of a number of courtroom rulings but additionally marks a transparent break from the previous for the Indian authorities when it comes to coverage. The IT Ministry’s earlier pro-industry guidelines had proposed a self-regulatory framework for on-line gaming in India, however implementation proved troublesome amid considerations over the gaming {industry} policing itself.
Alternatively, the provisions of the Invoice pave the way in which for the promotion of e-sports as a respectable aggressive sport, alongside ‘on-line social video games’ that will cost subscription or entry charges, supplied they don’t contain stakes or wagers.
Nonetheless implementing the ban on RMG platforms might show difficult, as unlawful betting websites and playing apps have beforehand evaded restrictions by switching domains, utilizing mirror web sites, altering financial institution suppliers, utilizing mule financial institution accounts, and counting on untraceable cryptocurrency wallets.
Imposing the ban
As per the laws, “No individual shall provide, help, abet, induce or in any other case indulge or interact within the providing of on-line cash recreation and on-line cash gaming service,” failing which they might be imprisoned for as much as three years and penalised Rs 1 crore.
This is able to make it unlawful for web service suppliers (ISPs) and web-hosting providers to assist RMG platforms corresponding to Dream11, Cell Premier League (MPL), Winzo, and so on. It will additionally drive Apple and Google to take away such apps from their respective app shops.
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The laws additionally prohibits banks and monetary establishments from facilitating monetary transactions on such platforms.These selling RMG platforms, corresponding to social media influencers and celebrities, additionally face jail time of two years and a penalty of Rs 50 lakh. Social media platforms corresponding to Instagram, YouTube, and X in addition to communication apps, engines like google, and every other type of media platform is also held chargeable for failing to curb adverts from RMG companies.
To research offences below the laws, the net gaming legislation empowers authorised officers to hold out search operations at bodily and digital locations, even with out a warrant.
Issues across the ban
One of many predominant considerations is that banning all RMG platforms would drive gamers deeper into the darkish internet. “The unlawful market, at the moment estimated at over USD 100 billion yearly, poses important dangers to tax collections and nationwide safety, exploiting fee channels like UPI mule accounts, hawala networks, and cryptocurrencies,” Kazim Rizvi, founding director, The Dialogue, advised The Indian Specific.
“Slicing off the respectable RMG {industry} by way of prohibitive regulation is not going to curb such illicit exercise, slightly, it might drive gamers additional into these shadow markets, amplifying fiscal losses and regulatory challenges,” he added.
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The cumulative dimension of unlawful betting companies was estimated at Rs 8.2 lakh crore, based on a 2024 report by Suppose Change Discussion board, an unbiased suppose tank. One other report revealed by Digital India Basis (DIF) in March 2025 discovered that 4 on-line playing platforms – Parimatch, Stake, 1xBet, and Batery Guess – noticed over 1.6 billion visits from Indian customers in a span of three months.
On-line casinos, playing and betting apps had been deemed unlawful as they had been thought-about to be video games of probability. Rummy video games and fantasy sports activities apps had been permissible because the courts had held that they had been video games of talent. Nonetheless, the brand new legislation strikes previous this distinction as its provisions apply to all on-line cash gaming platforms, regardless of whether or not they’re video games of talent or probability.
“It wipes out home firms that the federal government may regulate, and opens the door for unlawful offshore betting and playing entities to take advantage of and defraud customers additional,” Meghna Bal, director of Esya Centre, opined.
Technical obstacles going through the ban
The brand new on-line gaming legislation means that RMG platforms will likely be blocked by way of orders issued below Part 69A of the IT Act, 2000, just like the blocking of unlawful betting and playing websites.
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Final month, the IT Ministry knowledgeable Parliament that it has blocked 1,524 playing and betting web sites and cellular apps since 2022, utilizing powers below the IT Act, 2000 and the IGST Act, 2017. Nonetheless, prohibiting entry to those platforms has been troublesome as they use techniques corresponding to:
Area switching: Offshore playing web sites steadily evade restrictions by switching domains to remain on-line. As an illustration, three completely different mirror web sites of on-line betting platform Parimatch (corresponding to pari-match-in.com, pari-bet.in, and pari-matchin.com) noticed 266 million visits from Indian customers over three months, as per the DIF report. “Furthermore, throughout account creation, we found that the identical login credentials labored throughout a number of mirror websites,” it added.
Mule financial institution accounts: These are financial institution accounts which might be usually rented from small distributors and will belong to unsuspecting people. Playing platforms use such mule financial institution accounts to covertly transfer cash and route it outdoors India. These accounts threaten to weaken the laws’s fee blocking provisions and threat penalising harmless account holders slightly than the outlawed platforms themselves.
Superior digital advertising and marketing methods: Whereas well-liked influencers with greater than 1,000,000 or so followers could also be simply recognized and penalised below the brand new on-line gaming legislation, betting firms corresponding to Stake reportedly promote their platform by counting on a community of micro and nano influencers who could also be tougher to hint. The legislation additionally doesn’t make an exception for influencers or celebrities whose likeness has been used to advertise RMG platforms with out their consent.
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Direct communication: Direct calls or messages guiding customers to particular URLs might also hold their providers seen and accessible to Indian customers regardless of the official ban.
The IT Ministry might notify further guidelines with a purpose to perform the provisions of the brand new on-line gaming legislation. A key space requiring readability, based on Vikram Jeet Singh, a companion at legislation agency BTG Advaya, is how web sites and apps providing on-line cash video games will likely be recognized.
“A recreation developer will at all times strongly argue that their recreation is just not topic to the prohibition, for any variety of causes. If there’s a dispute on whether or not a web-based recreation is a web-based cash recreation, the federal government ought to make clear what authority (or courtroom) will settle the dispute. There are ‘in recreation purchases’ out there in most video games, and it’s not clear if these or different ‘micro-transactions’ in video games are actually prohibited,” he advised The Indian Specific.