Google will soon extend support to more real-money games and plans to bring this support to more countries. Currently, the pilot was limited to India, Mexico and Brazil. The announcement will come as good news for developers of real-money games (RMG), given they have faced more restrictions on Google Play Store so far. In India, the government continues to debate on what exactly constitutes as a game of skill or a game of chance and detailed regulation is still awaited.
RMG as a category has seen exponential growth in the Indian market, especially post the 2020 lockdown. Games such as fantasy sports and online rummy give users a tempting opportunity to earn more money by investing some of their own. Starting 2021, Google Play Store had included supported for these– though India was not part of the initial list. Here’s a look at what Google has announced and what the changes will mean.
More Real-Money Games Coming to Google Play Store This Year
In a blog post, Google said it will expand its pilot program for supporting real-money games and plans to include more game types and operators. So game developers and operators that were not part of the existing licensing framework will be given an opportunity. The extended pilot program will come into effect starting June 2024 in India, Mexico, and Brazil.
When Google first started allowing real-money games on Play Store in 2021, India was not among the 19 supported countries. It included India in the list of supported countries in late 2022. The support was limited to fantasy sports and rummy applications ,which led to backlash to creators of other types of real-money games. They accused Google of being discriminative and asked for a more inclusive approach.
Daily fantasy sports (DFS) and rummy apps can now continue to be on the Play Store in India until June 30, 2024. The post notes, “After that time, developers can distribute RMG apps on Google Play to users in India, beyond DFS and Rummy, in compliance with local laws and our updated policy.”
This means that once the new extended pilot program will come into effect, more types of real-money games will be allowed for distribution via the Play Store. Google does make it clear that these games will need to comply with local laws and its own updated policy. These include ensuring that the apps follow proper age restrictions.
It also plans to make changes to its service fee model for RMG— though it did not offer any details about what kind of changes to expect. It is working closely with developers to finalize a new model and more details will be shared in the coming months.
Indian Govt Take on ‘Real-Money’ Games
The Indian government’s panel under the IT ministry have called for a new regulating body and stricter laws for online gambling months back in September 2022. It wants such online games to be classified as games based on chance or skill. Previous reports have indicated that the central governments wants to regulate games based on ‘skills’.
Meanwhile, games based on ‘chance’ — which are similar to gambling and remain banned in most states– would remain under the purview of state governments as is the case right now. But currently state governments have more power in deciding what is a game of skill or chance and some have often chosen to ban both. Currently the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Assam, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, and Nagaland have banned fantasy sports as well.
