Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Two large real money gaming (RMG) firms, Dream11 and Gameskraft, said on Tuesday (August 26, 2025) that they would not challenge the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which prohibits “online money gaming”. The announcement comes as the industry, which has offered card games and fantasy sports apps where users could risk money in hopes of winnings, moves to wind up its operations in compliance with the law.
“As a responsible and law-abiding corporate entity, Gameskraft has no intention of pursuing any legal challenge to the legislation,” the latter firm said in a statement. “We fully respect the legislative process and remain committed to operating within the framework of the law.”
Dream11 parent firm Dream Sports’ co-founder Harsh Jain said that the firm will not challenge the law. “I don’t want to live in the past,” Mr. Jain was quoted as saying by a website. “We want to focus entirely on the future and not fight with the government on something that they don’t want.”
The RMG industry quickly complied with the Act by discontinuing money games altogether, even though the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is yet to notify the law. The government has indicated that it will give firms at most a month to wind up their activities and let users finish withdrawing their deposited money, lest a notification cause those withdrawal activities to be immediately criminalised.
Video games
Even as the RMG industry’s apex bodies, E-Gaming Federation, Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports, and All India Gaming Federation, stay mum on the prospects of challenging the ban in court, a section of the videogaming industry in India on Tuesday announced that it would form its own industry group.
The Indian Game Publishers and Developers Association, which counts Nazara Technologies, Ludo King developer Gametion, SuperGames and Dot9 Games among its founding members, will be a “unified voice for game publishers and developers”, said a statement.
The video game industry has long complained of the conflation of RMG with e-sports and other video games, worrying that it may get caught up in any backlash against RMG firms.
Published – August 26, 2025 09:03 pm IST
