'There is responsibility to make great games that are played by audiences, that fill the gap from an entertainment perspective.'
Casual gaming studios and publishers are set to benefit from the government's blanket ban on real money gaming (RMG) platforms such as Dream11, Games24x7, Mobile Premier League, and WinZO, even as the overall gaming industry contracts.
Industry executives said the ban could push demand for casual, midcore, and AAA titles -- games with low-to-moderate complexity and shorter session lengths that rely on advertising and in-app purchases.
Popular titles such as Ludo King (Gametion), Real Cricket (Nautilus Mobile), Indus Battle Royale (SuperGaming), and Raji: An Ancient Epic (Nodding Heads Games) are among those expected to see a boost.
"I don't see a reason why RMG guys cannot compete with us since they have a large bank balance. But, do they want to compete in these spaces? If they wanted to, they would have done it by now," a founder of a casual gaming firm said.
Casual gaming players said they expect RMG companies to enter the segment, leveraging their strong cash reserves in e-sports or shooter games.
However, market executives cautioned that not all of the 450 million Indians who have played real money games such as ludo, poker, or rummy are likely to shift to casual gaming overnight.
"Now the next part of it is, does this change anything from a gaming industry perspective? Who does it benefit?
"There is responsibility for us now to make great games that are played by the audiences, that fill in the gap from an entertainment perspective," the person quoted above said.
The ban on RMG comes at a time when multiple Indian studios, publishers, and game developers have gathered at global gaming fair Gamescom in Germany.
"The Chinese games here are far ahead in terms of gameplay, graphics, and development. For us to kind of get there as an industry, and as a nation is going to take a few years," one of the attendees at the event told Business Standard.
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, which was passed in Parliament on Thursday, August 21, 2025, seeks to promote e-sports, educational games, and social gaming.
A joint report by the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, the Interactive Entertainment & Innovation Council, and WinZO said that just around 1,500 competitive e-sports players are active in India.
This category of games is a sub-format of video gaming where individual players or teams take part in formal competitions dedicated to specific titles, typically in front of spectators, according to the report.
This category includes games such as Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), League of Legends, Valorant, and Call of Duty, among others.
The RMG ban puts the jobs of more than 200,000 people across more than 400 entities at risk.
Industry participants noted that while casual gaming firms continue to hire, the scale of employment remains limited and largely focused on specialised domains such as graphics or development.
"The industry is small in India today. Most of the development that happens in the country is being done to service foreign clients for their back-end work," another industry executive employed with an RMG company explained.
According to a report by Lumikai, an interactive and games venture capital firm, the Indian gaming market is expected to hit the $7.5 billion valuation mark by 2027-2028.
The report anticipates a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 per cent, driven by increasing in-app purchases and advertising revenues in casual and mid-core games.
Despite the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) issuing 1,298 directions between 2022 and 2024 to block online betting, gambling, and gaming Web sites, executives from real money gaming firms allege that non-compliant offshore platforms continued to thrive in India.
Additionally, the Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI), in a note published in March, said it had blocked 357 non-compliant offshore RMG entities, with 700 more under scrutiny.
With the ban on homegrown RMG platforms, offshore entities are expected to thrive, cornering the entire Indian market through a web of channels on social media messaging platforms and proliferation of these apps operated from regulatory havens.
"The cracking down on offshore platforms led us to believe that the centre was focussed on curbing these operators by working with the homegrown industry as partners. There were risk and analytics people advising the government on illegal money flows and suspicious behaviour," an executive with knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity.
Executives added that the industry cooperated with the government on cracking down the offshore entities during the past few months.
Offshore entities continued to promote their services through outdoor advertising, despite government orders to block them, they said.
Executives noted that bans on legitimate operators in states like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu pushed RMG activity towards offshore companies in the past.
They cautioned that after a complete ban is imposed on companies in India, there could be a rise in instances of financial distress and money laundering, since offshore entities are immune to regulatory scrutiny.
"The demand does not evaporate because of this ban, the demand is still there. It's just that a different set of operators will be available now to fulfill that," an executive said.
PRAHAR's (Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Addressal) July 2024 survey of 2,500 gamers in Telangana -- where RMG has been banned for eight years -- found more than 94 per cent of players still accessing offshore or illicit apps through VPNs, Telegram groups, or sideloaded platforms.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff