When Parliament enacted the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (PROGA), it resolved years of debate by prohibiting all online games involving money, whether of skill or chance. The Act answered one question, but it left another hanging in the air. If money games are banned, what becomes of the vast universe of games without money – the e -sports tournaments, casual mobile titles, and social platforms that occupy the time of nearly 488 million Indians? How safe are these spaces when Artificial Intelligence, often invisible to the player, now shapes almost every aspect of the experience?

The anxiety is not abstract. AI systems are now embedded in matchmaking, progression design, and even in the form of “black-box agents” that play against users. These opaque, non-interpretable models are agents whose internal logic cannot be explained easily to the end user. Players are left to wonder whether they are competing against other humans or against an algorithm fine – tune to manipulate engagement. Courts abroad have recognised this as a legal problem. In MDY Industries , LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010), the U.S. Ninth Circuit upheld liability against a company selling bot software for World of Warcraft. In Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Bossland GmbH [2017] EWHC 252 (Ch), the English High Court granted injunctions and damages against cheat-software developers,........

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