Online Gaming Act 2025

The Online Gaming Act 2025, in full the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, is the Indian law that banned all online games played for money across the country. The ban applies whether the game is one of skill or one of chance. The same law supports esports and social games, which are played without money at stake. Parliament passed it in August 2025.

Here is what came before. Indian law long treated games of skill differently from gambling. Gambling, which depends mainly on chance, was banned in most states under old state laws. The main exceptions were the casinos of Goa and Sikkim, and the lotteries run by some state governments. A game of skill is one in which the player's knowledge and practice mainly decide the result. It could be played for money. Courts had held that rummy is a game of skill, and several High Courts said the same of fantasy sports. On that basis, fantasy cricket, rummy, poker and paid tournaments grew into one of India's largest consumer internet industries. Some states passed their own bans, and courts struck several of them down. In 2023, the government applied GST of 28 per cent to the full amount that players deposited.

Here is how the Act sorts games. Esports, organised competitions in video games, are recognised as a sport and promoted. Online social games, played for fun or for a subscription fee, with no money to be won, are allowed. Online money games, in which a player pays or deposits money in the hope of winning more, are banned. It no longer matters whether skill or chance decides the result. The ban reaches beyond the game companies. It is an offence to offer such a game, to advertise one, or for a bank or payment system to process payments for one. The players themselves are not treated as offenders. The Act also lets the government set up an authority that decides which category a game belongs to.

Take, for example, a real-money gaming app for fantasy cricket. Before the Act, a player paid ₹49 to enter a contest and could win a share of the prize money. After it, the app could offer only free contests.

Consider a cash tournament platform that ran paid contests inside other studios' games. For players in India, it had to remove the entry fees and the cash prizes.

Say a team of college students plays a battle game in a national tournament. As esports, the tournament is now recognised under the Act.

How is the Act different from India's gambling laws? Gambling laws, such as the Public Gambling Act of 1867 and the laws of each state, mainly cover games of chance played in physical places. The Online Gaming Act covers games played online, across all of India, and it bans money games even when skill decides them. The casinos of Goa and the state lotteries, described in gambling and betting, are outside it. Where online betting is legal, in other countries, sportsbooks run under licences and must offer responsible gambling tools instead.