Playing by the rules

With the idea of guaranteeing that online games comply with Indian laws and to protect users against probable harm, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued draft amendments concerning online gaming on January 2, 2023.

- Shivanand Pandit

The Minister of State at MeitY Rajeev Chandrasekhar mentioned that the draft recommends a self-regulatory system that, in the future, may also govern the content of online gaming.

India is home to a booming gaming market. It is a very significant slice of the start-up ecosystem. According to the gaming and interactive media fund, Lumikai, with around 900 gaming establishments and 500 million gamers, the market is estimated to be worth $8.6 billion by 2027, up from $2.6 billion in 2022. The rising fame of online gaming, particularly during the Covid-19 years, produced three unicorns in 2022 namely - Dream11, MPL and Games24x7.

Rules of the Game

Meity has suggested a modification to bring online gaming under the domain of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules of 2021. The suggestion, which is part of the draft online gaming policy that will be subject to public consultation till January 17, tries to consider online gaming establishments as intermediaries. The guidelines recommend a supervisory outline for online gaming intermediaries, which accept consumer deposits and create anticipations of winnings. Intermediaries are how the IT Rules define units that enable the flow of data on the internet. For example, search engines like Google, social media platforms like Facebook, broadcasters, and OTT platforms are all intermediaries. In the gaming context, any platform that offers at least one online game is a gaming intermediary.