The real money gaming industry, which includes online rummy and fantasy sports wagering platforms, largely approved of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s draft online gaming amendment, an industry executive who attended a consultation meeting on Tuesday said.
Trivikraman Thampy, Co-Founder and CEO, Games24x7, said that executives at the meeting had some suggestions that the government indicated it was open to. “Certain operators suggested that KYC [know your customer requirements] could be done in a graded fashion,” as is the case with mobile wallet operators, Mr. Thampy said. “It was a very constructive conversation,” he added.
Explained | How is India moving to regulate online gaming?
Mr. Thampy added that some operators asked that testing requirements on real money gaming platforms — to be done by Self-Regulatory Bodies (SRBs) — be relaxed to allow sandbox testing for unreleased games, as detailed testing can only be done when a game is actually released. “It was suggested that maybe the registration can be broken down into two steps,” Mr. Thampy said, so that testing for unreleased games can be done in a less demanding way.
Industry executives at the meeting also asked the Ministry to allow multiple Self-Regulatory Bodies to start with, as it would be administratively challenging to accommodate all gaming companies under a single one at the beginning stage itself, he said.
Video gaming industry
Video gaming industry companies had released a letter on Monday asking that they be regulated in a different framework than the one that is being proposed for real money wagering platforms. The draft amendment to the IT Rules, 2021 that the government has proposed currently only covers the latter category.
The government later on Tuesday extended the last day of comment on the draft amendment by one week to January 25th.
