India’s Parliament has now passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025—an overdue attempt to impose order on an industry that for too long has hidden behind the euphemism of “gaming" while in reality running an unregulated gambling economy.

For years, the government flirted with self-regulation, hoping the industry would police itself. But the evidence of harm—addiction, suicides, family bankruptcies, fraud, and money laundering—has been overwhelming. This Bill is the first serious attempt to promote esports and casual games while ring-fencing society from the predations of online money-games. This is a much-needed legislation and CIPP has been asking for it for years.

At its heart, the Bill draws a red line: any online game that involves staking or winning money is prohibited. Section 5 makes it unlawful to advertise, sponsor, or promote such games. The law expands liability beyond operators to include publishers, app stores, payment gateways, advertisers, and influencers. If a payment intermediary routes money into a banned app, or if an app store lists it in defiance of a blocking order, they face penalties alongside the operator. The Bill creates an Online Gaming Authority to license permissible forms of gaming—esports, educational, and social titles—while giving it powers of search, seizure, blocking, and financial interdiction. In short, it shifts enforcement from a failed self-regulatory experiment to statutory authority.

In April 2023, the government amended the IT Rules to allow industry-led Self-Regulatory Organisations (SROs) to certify “permissible" games. The idea was that games of skill would be permitted while wagering games would be kept out, supported by voluntary features like age-gating, self-exclusion, and time-limits (MeitY Press Note). But this framework depended on the very platforms profiting from money-gaming to draw the boundaries. Predictably, compliance never came. Banned games reappeared with new branding; advertising continued unabated; payments found fresh........

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