A CONFOUNDING DECISION

I READ ABOUT THE blanket online gaming ban with some amount of bemusement.

- ATUL PANDE

What I thought was the right direction for the business to head towards was reversed with a hastily presented Bill which was passed in the Lok Sabha. It appears to me that this action isn’t thought through—and why it won't serve us well in the long run.

The current business practices did not arrive in a vacuum. Until very recently, New Delhi’s approach was to regulate rather than prohibit. The 2023 amendments to the Information Technology Rules created a co-regulatory framework: gaming platforms offering money games were to register , get their titles verified and meet transparency and consumer-protection obligations. That architecture treated online gaming like any other digital intermediary, with the government retaining blocking powers against illegal or harmful services. It was a pragmatic attempt to separate legitimate skill-based gaming from scams.

The new national ban on real-money online games reverses that logic with alacrity. Overnight, leading platforms have to block moneygaming features, and the industry's growth trajectory and future fell under a cloud. The ban's stated goals—curbing addiction, financial harm, and misleading promotions appear serious. But a sweeping prohibition that outlaws all games played with money without consistently differentiating between games of skill and games of chance repeats a mistake that Indian courts have already flagged. And of course, the ban completely ignores the offline gambling market in India which is still multiple times the size of the online industry, and probably carries more harm, poor practices and tax losses than the online one.

Courts & Bans