As India clamps down on real-money gaming, browser games are picking up the slack

India's online gaming industry spent much of 2025 in legal turmoil. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act received presidential assent in August and came into force in October, banning real-money games outright, freezing banking services tied to them, and sending several well-funded platforms scrambling for relief in the courts.

Fantasy sports companies, rummy operators, and casual money-game startups that had built entire businesses on paid entry models suddenly found themselves without a legal foundation. The Supreme Court is still hearing challenges to the Act, and the outcome remains uncertain.

But while the regulated, monetised side of online gaming absorbs the blow, a different category has been growing steadily, with no regulatory exposure at all.

Browser gaming, the kind where you open a tab and play without downloading anything, without depositing money, without creating an account, fits none of the definitions the Act was designed to target. There are no stakes, no wagers, no paid entry. The games are free, ad-supported, and accessible from any device with an internet connection.

Platforms like Poki, the Amsterdam-based web gaming company that counts India as one of its largest markets globally, have seen the country become a substantial part of their user base precisely because the barrier to play is so low. A mid-range Android phone and a data connection are enough. In a country where mobile internet penetration has grown faster than device capability. 

The model is simple: players get free access to a curated library of games, developers earn through ad revenue sharing, and platforms like Poki operate entirely outside the real-money ecosystem that Indian regulators have spent years trying to bring under control. The broader web gaming market is projected to exceed $3 billion globally by 2028, roughly three times its 2021 value, according to Google.

That structural difference is not incidental. Browser gaming platforms carry no compliance burden under the new Act, with registration requirements and banking restrictions applying only to operators in the real-money space. They are, in regulatory terms, a clean category.

For Indian players, browser gaming is not a direct substitute for real-money platforms. The motivation is different. These are not games people play to win cash, but games played to pass time, to compete casually, to try something new in a few minutes. Platforms in this space are also deliberate about how their ad models work. Poki, for instance, uses rewarded video ads as its primary format: players opt in to watch a short ad in exchange for an in-game benefit, with the experience built around player choice rather than forced interruptions.

Whether Indian developers take notice is a separate question. The web gaming ecosystem has a low barrier to entry compared to mobile: smaller file sizes, simpler engines, no app store approval process. For studios in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, or Pune looking for a route to global distribution without the user acquisition costs of mobile, browser platforms are an option most have not seriously explored. Some studios work exclusively with Poki and earn enough through the platform to sustain their work entirely.

India's gaming regulation story is still being written. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the constitutional challenges to the Act. But in the space those challenges have opened, browser gaming is already finding room to grow.