The government is expected to notify the gaming self-regulatory organisations (SROs) that will certify what is a permissible online real money game, by the end of the month, minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.
Currently, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) is analysing the four proposals submitted by All India Gaming Federation (AIGF), Esports Players Welfare Association (EPWA), All India Gaming Regulator (AIGR) Foundation, a consortium of the E-Gaming Federation (EGF) and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS).
“There is a slight backlog in a couple of things. After the notification, it took the applications about 2-3 months to come. The latest application was received 10-days ago,” Chandrasekhar said. “The government committee is checking the proposals on parameters like SRO not dominated by industry, if legal experts, child protection and child rights people are part of the SROs or not, among other things,” he added.
As per the rules, online real money games will become permissible only when it is verified by a self-regulatory organisation (SRO). For other online games which do not involve real money do not require any verification from an SRO.
The government had notified the online gaming rules on April 6 and had given a three-months time to the industry to come up with their proposal for SROs. The government will initially notify three SROs. The structure of SROs will involve government-approved entities including people with experience in online gaming, an educationist, an expert in the field of psychology, individuals dealing with protection of child rights, an individual with experience in the field of information and communication technology, and other relevant officials to be notified by the government.
When asked about SRO proposals having people with close connections with companies, Chandrasekhar said, “We won’t allow the industry capture of SRO. This is the first SRO that we are experimenting with and we can’t have it go wrong”.
In case the proposals fail to qualify the test of independence from industry, the government will get involved in such activity of certifying permissible real money online gaming.
The SROs will have to come up with a framework to define the content of an online game in a view to safeguard users against harm, ensure that online gaming companies are taking measures to safeguard children, companies are mandatorily specifying risk of gaming addiction and financial loss through repeated warning messages at higher frequency beyond a reasonable duration for a gaming session etc, and measures to safeguard against the risk of financial frauds.
The online gaming companies will also have to display a mark of verification by the self-regulatory body on such games, inform their users of the policy for withdrawal or refund of deposit, manner of determination and distribution of winnings, fees and other charges payable, obtain the KYC details of the users, and not giving credit or enabling financing by third parties to the users.
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