Casual gaming market set to gain from govt's ban on RMG platforms

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, 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 two lakh 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 2027-28 (FY28). 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.