Online gaming is on, online betting is not
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, engages directly with a long-standing ambiguity in India’s digital gaming ecosystem. Its central move is to shift the legal inquiry away from whether a game is based on skill or chance, and towards whether participation involves money or other stakes in expectation of monetary or other enrichment. In doing so, it establishes a classification framework in which online money games are prohibited, while e-sports and online games are separately recognised as permissible categories.
