New Delhi: More than a month after the rules under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025 took effect, the registration form for online social games and e-sports is available on the official government website, but the portal meant to receive it does not yet exist. This has left operators with no way to register and also raises questions over the legal status of tournaments already held.
A MeitY official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the system was close to ready. The process was underway and the portal would be up soon, the official said, adding that the form is already available and there should be no confusion on that count.
The rules were notified on 22 April and came into force on 1 May, the day the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI) became operational. The Act, passed by Parliament in August 2025, is the country’s first central law dedicated to online gaming.
It splits online games into three categories: Online money games, which are banned outright; online social games, which are permitted; and e-sports, which are permitted but can be registered for recognition. Money games cannot be registered or recognised as e-sports, closing the route by which a wagering platform could relabel itself.
The law sorts every online game by money and stakes, not by how competitive it looks. An online money game is one where a player stakes cash hoping to win cash on the outcome, such as real-money fantasy sports, online poker or cash rummy; these are banned. An online social game is played for entertainment with no payout tied to winning, such as puzzle or casual titles; these are permitted. An e-sport is an organised, skill-based competition such as BGMI or Valorant, where entry fees and prize money are allowed but betting is not. E-sports are permitted but must be registered to operate lawfully.
The ban on real-money games removed an entire commercial category. The industry had drawn billions of dollars in investment and employed close to two lakh people before it lost its legal footing. What the law claims to promote in its place is e-sports and social gaming, the sector now waiting on the registration machinery.
A form but no portal
Rahil Chatterjee, a principal associate at Ikigai Law, a legal policy firm, said the basic problem is that there is nowhere to file the registration form.
“The Act came into force on 1 May. The registration form has now been published, but the form itself directs applicants to submit it through ‘the designated OGAI portal’, a portal that does not yet exist. Rule 8(2) similarly presupposes a functioning submission mechanism. Over a month in, there is no way to actually register. The form exists but the process does not.”
E-sports tournaments have continued through that gap, and Chatterjee said it creates exposure no one has resolved.
“This creates a genuine legal problem. From the day the Act came into application, e-sports tournaments were required to be registered before they can lawfully operate. But with no registration mechanism available, none of them could register. Those tournaments involved entry fees and prize payouts, which, absent registration, potentially brings them within the online money gaming prohibition under the Act. Were those tournaments legal? It is a question that affects the legal standing of every e-sports event conducted in India since the Act came into being. The OGAI is yet to provide clarity on this.”
‘Title’ versus ‘tournament’
Chatterjee said the form’s deeper flaw is that it never settles who must register an e-sport. “The e-sports section of the form has a significant omission. There is no reference to recognition under the National Sports Governance Act, and no explanation for why.”
“More fundamentally, the form doesn’t resolve who is actually required to register: The game title, or the tournament organiser. Those are entirely different entities with entirely different relationships to the law. Until that is clarified, the harms the Act is designed to address will arise at the tournament level, not the title level. If the framework never reaches tournament organisers, those harms remain entirely outside it,” he explained.
The conflation, he said, does not match how the market runs. “Take any major title as an example. Does the game’s publisher register it? And does that then give them a monopoly over all tournaments built around it in India? That is not how the market works.”
“The e-sports ecosystem is built on a mix of publisher-licenced events, third-party sponsored tournaments, and independent community events. The form does not accommodate that reality, it conflates the game with the competition, and treats them as the same thing,” he added.
He said the form’s fields read as if built for a different kind of game. “The fields on nature of play, revenue model, and user safety appear to have been designed with social and casual games in mind. Take ‘anti-addiction and playtime restrictions’: That is a meaningful protection in a casual gaming context. For a competitive e-sports tournament, it simply does not translate. The form would benefit from a separate framework for e-sports that reflects how competitive play actually operates, rather than applying a social gaming template to a structurally different activity.”
Industry body: Burden, but overdue
Vishal Gondal, founder of nCore Games, the studio behind FAU-G: Domination, and co-chair of the Indian Game Publishers and Developers Association, said the gaps were real but the answer was not a lighter form.
“Film, OTT and social media all have regulatory frameworks. With 700 million users in India, gaming cannot remain the only exception,” he said, calling for a plain-language companion guide from OGAI rather than a simplified form. On why studios should register when social games are exempt, he said: “If your architecture cannot be put down in writing, that is a product problem, not a paperwork problem.”
On whether a form can show if a safety feature works, he said it cannot, and was not meant to. “A form does not prove an age gate works, but it creates a legal commitment tied to a named individual. Zero accountability for 700 million users is worse. This is a starting point, not a finish line.”
On the personal liability the form attaches to a named signatory, with penalties of up to Rs 10 lakh and cancellation, he said: “Personal liability from day one forces you to build compliance habits before you scale, rather than fixing a broken culture after damage occurs. The solution is clearer guidance from OGAI, not less accountability.”
Where it stands
The OGAI is attached to MeitY, chaired by an additional secretary and drawing members from home, finance, information and broadcasting, youth affairs and sports, and law ministries. Provisions of the Act are being challenged in several high courts. A month and a half in, the category the law sets out to promote has a form it cannot file, a recognition route the form does not mention, and a portal the government says is on its way.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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