The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) released the draft rules on January 2 and had asked stakeholders to submit their views by January 17.
On Tuesday, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar met representatives from online gaming companies and intermediaries, where he reiterated that industry bodies would not be permitted to become self-regulatory organisations (SRO) and that they had to be away from the dominance of gaming intermediaries.
“It is wrong to assume that an industry body will automatically become an SRO (self-regulatory organisation). Any industry body will not be SRO. It will be a body representing all the stakeholders,” the minister said.
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The proposed a self-regulatory body would be responsible for certifying games and for ensuring that online games which operate in India follow rules and regulations.
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Apart from the SRO, the IT ministry had also proposed a mandatory KYC verification of online gamers. Representatives of online gaming companies such as Games 24×7 and WinZo, among others, along with some industry bodies joined the consultations held here on Tuesday.
Some of the stakeholders, including WinZo games, expressed apprehension about the requirement of games being allowed to operate in India only after registration with an SRO and said such pre-registrations were “highly likely to compromise the confidentiality of information required to be submitted for evaluation/certification and lead to IP leaks.”
“There could be a first pre-registration step that maybe has a slightly less stringent criterion and then within three months of pre-registration the operator has to get the final registration for the game,” Trivikraman Thampy, co-founder and chief executive of Games24x7, said.
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