The gaming sector should be operated by the rules of the central government rather than their respective laws and rules of the states. This will help companies to apply their energy on innovation for the last users. This is to say that Saumya Singh Rathore, co-founder of Desi Gaming Company Winzo.
Rathore told the business standard, 'There are huge possibilities for the country in this region and (rules) cannot be so different. Currently there are very young, new, first generation entrepreneurs in this mechanism. They cannot deal with complex regulatory environment. Their focus should be on making products that topped the world. We understand that state controls gambling i.e. luck games like casino and lottery. The Center has the right to regulate gaming, even if it is the model of earnings involved.
At present, due to lack of central government rules, many states have their own rules for this region. However, the government had amended the information technology rules of 2021 to bring a comprehensive regulatory structure for online gaming in 2023. But the proposed rules were never implemented.
In the next two years, several states including Tamil Nadu banned sports like online poker and Rammi. In February this year, the Tamil Nadu Online Gaming Authority (TNOGA) brought rules for online real-mani game, including the implementation of dark hours between midnight to five in the morning.
In its order, TNOGA said that users under the age of 18 will be stopped from playing real-mani games online. Apart from this, at the time of registration on gaming platforms, know your customer (KYC) verification has been made mandatory.
The authority also made it mandatory that if a player plays the game for more than an hour, the online gaming platform will show caution pop-up messages and such pop-up messages will be shown to the user every 30 minutes.
Rathore said that such different rules are mainly due to the conflict between gaming and gambling. He said that although all states have their own reasons for banning or allowing gambling, there is a need to understand online gaming differently from gambling to avoid different rules of the states.
First Published – April 16, 2025 | 10:31 PM IST
