Esports, Skill Games, and Casual Games India: The Untapped Goldmine and Way Forward After Real Money Gaming Ban
Written by: Shiva Kumaran
Quick Summary
The real money gaming ban was imposed on all Indian games by the Online Gaming regulation 2025.
Impacted gaming businesses need to pivot to casual games, skill games, and esports to survive and explore other monetization opportunities.
Esports, casual and skill-based games are positioned to fill the gap created by the ban on real money gaming.
Introduction
The Online Gaming Regulation 2025 took the country’s gaming ecosystem by shock, imposing a blanket ban on all real money games (including all games of skill, like fantasy sports, and chance). The fantasy sports industry, once hailed as India’s sunrise sector, now faces an existential crisis. With resilience and adaptability built into the DNA of the country’s gaming industry, the next chapter of innovation and survival following the real money gaming ban (RMG) lies in Esports, casual, and skill game development, with the legislation encouraging these games. This blog will tell you how these games have a proven potential to reshape India’s gaming future.
What are Skill Games? Why Skill Games India will Thrive Post the RMG Ban
For gaming businesses, the next big opportunity after the real money gaming ban lies in striking the perfect balance between regulation-approved gaming formats, users’ entertainment, and healthy competition. Comparing games of skill vs chance India, skill games offer the perfect combination of these ingredients by encouraging continuous practice, rewarding strategy, and shifting focus from chance to players’ decision-making strategies. Prioritizing logic over luck, skill games India can help investors, game developers, and gaming businesses build credible gaming ecosystems that are accessible to all, unlock greater revenue opportunities, and comply with established regulations.
The reasons why skill-based games will thrive in India after the real money gaming ban include:
1.) Green Signal from Regulations
The Online Gaming Regulation 2025 promotes esports and other online social games whose “outcome is determined solely by factors such as physical dexterity, mental agility, strategic thinking, or similar skills”. With regulatory approval, skill-based games offer a safe and sustainable growth pathway by replacing luck with logic and skill.
2.) Cross-Industry Penetration
Skill-based games blend entertainment with purpose. This enables businesses across industries to leverage gamified elements to drive better adoption and engagement. Consider healthcare using game challenges as a medium for adherence, corporates integrating games for making training more efficient, and ed-tech using gamification to make learning more life-like and fun.
3.) Consistent User Engagement: 5G and Gaming India
The widespread accessibility of 5G will fuel the development of multimedia gaming apps with fast response times to maximize engagement. Additionally, without monetary risks or limits, skill-based games encourage users to return to your app daily with challenges, leaderboards, streaks, and competitive formats. These gaming mechanisms ensure consistent engagement, maximize retention, and give the user a sense of progress in getting better at a skill.
4.) Diverse Monetization Strategies
With the ban on real money gaming, gaming innovators are pushed to explore other revenue mediums while offering users the enjoyment of games in formats compliant with the Bill. Skill-based games offer multiple monetization strategies, such as subscriptions, in-app purchases, and targeted sponsorships to create a more valuable and wholesome ecosystem for users.
5.) Global Appeal and Community
Skill games India can connect India to world competitions and create greater user stickiness with gaming communities and fans across the world. This mass appeal comes from catering to a wider audience without any limitations of niche or money.
Winning Strategies for Skill-based Gaming Platforms India 2025
With the pivot from real money gaming necessary for survival, understanding proven strategies for skill-based game success will be helpful while building a gaming ecosystem compliant with regulations and appealing to users all the same. Some of them are discussed below:
1.) Mobile-First Design
With smartphone accessibility across every part of the world, mobile-first design is a no-brainer for success. It helps businesses cater to a wider user base by optimizing their apps for an extensive range of low-end devices and minimal system requirements.
Consider Free Fire for example. Mobile-first design and optimization for low-end smartphones helped them unlock massive scale in budget-conscious markets like India, where most users prefer these devices. The battle royale game, combining strategy, quick decisions, and tactical character analysis, won the award for the “Best Popular Vote Game” in 2020 by the Google Play Store. It had one million daily active users globally as of May 2021.
2.) Glocalization
The survival strategy beyond real money games requires businesses to blend local fervour with skill formation to maximize user engagement. Consider games like Dream 11. Their popularity and growth as India’s first gaming unicorn can be largely attributed to capturing the local pulse for cricket and offering a platform that resonates well with a cricket-obsessed nation. Additionally, this gives opportunities to make your apps culturally relevant to your target users and incorporate elements tailored to their needs, including language preferences to maximize engagement and improve accessibility.
3.) Fair Gaming and Threat Detection
As the gaming regulation impacts startups, transparency and fair play are more crucial than ever in gaming environments. In 2025, skill-based games can deploy AI detection to identify unfair moves, ensure fair competition, and accurate match combinations to build trust with users. According to an article by Chess.com, the company uses a threat detection system to identify fraud and suspicious gameplay based over a 100 gameplay factors, automatically banning players whose performance seems improbable based on the algorithm findings.
4.) Esports Integration
For increased visibility and year-round participation, integration with larger esports tournaments is crucial. This is a proven strategy to invite consistent participation, user retention, community building, and retention. With esports revenue growth statistics poised to reach a revenue of USD 4.8 bn in 2025 and estimated to reach 896 mn users worldwide by 2029 according to a Statista report, integrating skill games with larger esports tournaments can offer your businesses more opportunities to show up and target users.
Why The Casual Gaming Market India Will Thrive Post RMG Ban
Remember how Candy Crush Saga took the entire world by storm? From metro riders to students to householders and even some senior citizens, there was a time when all of us saw people from all walks of life, owning a smartphone, crushing candies for the match-three puzzle. According to a Business of Apps report, it was one of the first freemium apps to generate $1 billion in revenue, and even after a decade of its launch, had over 180 million users in 2024.
This is because casual games are accessible to a wider audience as compared to RMG which cater to niche users only. The reasons why casual games India will see upward growth after the RMG ban include:
1.) Economic Accessibility
Real money games were limited to those who had spending potential. Casual games are accessible to a wider user base with a smartphone and internet connectivity. According to a Statista report, India has over 820 million smartphone users as of 2025. This points to limitless possibilities for casual game developers by catering to individual needs and preferences of this user base and eliminating the barrier of monetary investment.
2.) Proven Popularity of Genres
Casual gaming enjoys the proven popularity of multiple genres like match-three puzzles, arcade shooters, simulation and farming titles, as well as endless runners. The best casual gaming platforms India 2025 include Ludo King, Candy Crush Saga, and Stardew Valley, among others, catering to diverse genre preferences by users worldwide and extending accessibility to all age groups without any complicated rules.
3.) Diverse Monetization Options
Casual games are crucial constituents of untapped gaming markets in India. With their mass appeal, simple rules, minimal time investment for gameplay, and diverse monetization options, casual games offer gaming businesses and developers revenue potential from freemium upgrades, subscriptions, and ads. These options enable the pivot from real money gaming and serve users with resources they need to enjoy a pleasurable gaming experience without the risks of betting or gambling.
4.) Cultural Resonance
In 2025, the casual games that resonate culturally, emotionally, and realistically with users’ surroundings stand the chance of highest success. If you remember Subway Surfers, imagine it tailored to India’s mood during the IPL, with the IPL theme, commentary in local languages, and UX design accommodating the different Indian states the teams represent, and you have hit a jackpot without doubt.
How Will the Esports Growth India Fill the Vacuum Created by the RMG Ban
The Esports market India is projected to reach USD 139.3 mn in revenue as of 2025, according to a Statista report. The reasons why Esports have a proven potential to fill the vacuum created by the real money gaming ban include:
1.) Local Tournaments
The esports industry report India 2025 mentions that India is witnessing an upsurge of esports popularity with local tournaments and sponsorships throughout the year. This gives businesses more visibility in matches culturally rooted in people and an essential aspect of their gaming habit. With India’s gaming ecosystem maturing to form more connected user and player communities, esports are poised to grow exponentially in the nation. The Esports Federation of India recently launched the first under-18 squad for the Asian Youth Games, signalling a major development in this direction.
2.) Untapped Gaming Markets in India
The Online Gaming Bill India 2025 legalizes and encourages esports. In this uncertain scenario where real money games have been banned overnight, the Bill recognizes esports and gives it the required clarity missing so far. The esports ecosystem with players, organizers, event broadcasters, and game developers is poised to fuel the growth of the industry.
3.) World’s Largest Youth Population: Esports Employment Opportunities
According to Drishti IAS, India is home to the world’s largest youth population of 371 million people aged between 15 and 29. India’s youth sees esports as a unique blend of entertainment, opportunity, and tradition that powers its global dreams and gets the nation’s aspirations to the world stage. Catering to this age group, esports not only entertains them, it helps create a stable ecosystem of innovation and steady employment. The future of esports in India after ban looks bright with its multi-dimensional role, support from the government, and popularity among the youth.
How To Succeed In Esports Market India in 2025?
With the ban on real money games, the world’s largest youth population, smartphone, and internet accessibility, and most importantly, government approval, Esports businesses are just at an arm’s distance from becoming the next big thing. Here are some strategies to help you cover that distance:
Scalable Infrastructure: Lag-free systems that offer consistent experiences for daily casual games and popular leagues with millions of concurrent users.
Local Ecosystems: 2025 is the era of hyper-personalization and creating esports communities that offer social features and participation for local tournaments is the way to offer unmatched relevance.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: This is the Call of Duty. Solutions that work consistently across console, mobile, and PC solve for scale by reaching a wider user base.
Fair Gameplay: Be it 1000 users or 100 mn+, fair gameplay should not be compromised. Leverage AI-powered threat detection to identify suspicious activities and boost credibility in your ecosystem.
Diverse Monetization: Beyond real money gaming, here lies the opportunity to deliver tailored engagement.
The Real Money Gaming Ban: A New Beginning for Indian Gaming Companies
The RMG ban necessitates the pivot from real money gaming and betting to esports, casual, and skill games. With global successes like those witnessed in South Korea and China, Indian game developers have all reason to look at this difficult, overnight ban as yet another opportunity to innovate, tap into a larger market, and transform challenges into opportunities for unprecedented growth. Get in touch with us to discuss your pivot journeys and we will help you write your next success chapter with our decade-long game development experience.
FAQs
How to pivot from real money games to skill games?
Your gaming business can pivot from a real-money game to a skill-based game by rethinking the game mechanics, design, and monetization. Skill-based games should incentivise users with non-monetary means. Additionally, the outcome of the game should depend on users’ logic, decision, and performance at the game, as opposed to chance. For skill-based games, change the monetization strategy from entry fees to in-app purchases, subscriptions, and ad revenue.
What is the online gaming legal status India?
According to Online Gaming Regulation 2025, all real money games have been banned in India, including RMG fantasy sports, RMG skill and chance-based games. The Bill, however, recognizes Esports, online social games, casual, and skill-based games.
