The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025: An Analysis of Its Impact in the Online Gaming Domain in India

ABSTRACT

India has the world’s second-largest internet population. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 has been a landmark legislation protecting and safeguarding the people from the drawbacks of online real money games (ORMGs) while promoting other esports and educational games. Though the gaming sector in India has contributed constructively to the country’s economy, the Act is justified as it aims to shield people from predatory companies who have exploited the loopholes of the law to their advantage and causing heavy damage to the society as a whole. The major concerns being growing addiction, compulsive gaming habits, financial ruin and even suicide. The online gaming sector was majorly unregulated with no system of checks at all, giving opportunity to various anti-social and fraudulent minds to exploit the situation. The Act imposes a blanket prohibition on all ORMGs irrespective of whether they are games of skill or games of chance. A national-level regulatory authority is to be established for classifying and registering online games, deciding whether such games involve money transactions or gambling games. Thus, this Act is a landmark in the digital sector bringing about much needed regulative reforms. This research paper attempts to analyse the impugned legislation from different angles, going through established judicial precedents and exploring how artificial intelligence comes into the debate. The scholar attempts to explain the online gaming sector, the key reasons supporting and opposing the legislation, the long-standing precedence of ‘skill-chance’ distinction, related constitutional provisions and lastly how artificial intelligence influence the debate.