New Delhi

The Indian government has tweaked the rules for online gaming by prohibiting games that involve betting and wagering.

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The prohibition was listed on Thursday by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) which released a framework of multiple self-regulatory organisations (SROs).

These SROs will determine whether internet games are legal based on whether they allow wagering.

The new guidelines define online game as “that is offered on the internet and is accessible to a user through a computer resource or an intermediary.”

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These SROs are part of the IT Rules, 2023, passed by the ministry and pave the way for the establishment of a self-regulatory body for the registration and regulation of online gaming platforms as "intermediary" which is defined as one that "offers one or more than one online game".

New gaming guidelines

Minister of State for Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, while speaking to media on Thursday differentiated between “online game” and “online real money game”, claiming that the latter has been banned.

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“We see the Indian online gaming ecosystem to expand and grow into a multi-billion dollar industry and be an important catalyst to India’s one trillion-dollar digital economy goal by 2025-26, with very clear restrictions on online wagering and betting,” the minister said at a press conference.

“We’re dealing with a framework that allows an SRO, and there will be multiple SROs, to determine whether or not all online gaming is permissible,” Chandrasekhar added.

According to the guidelines, the government will designate various SROs comprising industry representatives, educators, and other professionals such as child experts, psychology experts, and so on, according to the final guidelines.

The government is going to notify three SROs, but more might be added later, he said.

The online gaming industry has been flourishing in India for the past four to five years or so, and accounts for $1.8 billion of the gaming market, mostly fuelled by mobile games.

A report by the Boston Consulting Group and Sequoia on India's mobile gaming sector shows that more than 300 million Indians play mobile games, and the gaming sector as a whole has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 38 per cent in 2019-2020 and 37 per cent in the previous fiscal year.

(With inputs from agencies)

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