Gameskraft partners WBNUJS for a gaming & tech research centre

The real-money gaming segment accounted for 77 percent of India's gaming sector revenues in 2022 which stood at Rs 13,500 crore

Skill-based gaming platform Gameskraft has partnered with West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS) to set up a research centre that will focus on gaming, technology, and sports laws, at a time when policy-making is gaining momentum in the nascent but fast-growing gaming sector.

"Gaming is all tech-enabled now and there is also an interplay of sports. Hence, we believe it is now the need of the hour to start a capacity building exercise (in the sector), where academia comes in a meaningful way to look at it in a holistic manner" Joyjyoti Misra, Group General Counsel at Gameskraft told Moneycontrol.

The centre will research topics wherever the law interfaces with areas such as gaming, technology, and sports. Researchers will collate, publish, and disseminate knowledge on these topics. They may also share their viewpoints with the government as it looks to start regulating the space.

"The entire idea for us is to enable that melting pot of ideas where academia, industry, government, policymakers, law enforcement and others can come together and essentially, we see a growth of law and policy making in the sector" Misra said.

The centre will be agnostic to gaming formats and technology, including developing areas such as web3 and NFTs or pure sports-related areas such as the legal frameworks of sports leagues and the player bidding process among others. In addition, it will introduce a credit course in the law school on some of these cutting-edge areas of law.

The law school will be responsible for framing the curriculum, Misra said.

"At the end of the day, all we're hoping for is to build a robust world class centre that is imparting fabulous education in this particular area and publishing research reports in peer-reviewed journals which would, in turn, help our policymakers" he said.

This development comes as the Indian government is increasing its focus on regulating the country's real-money gaming sector, in a bid to provide much-needed legal clarity that could pave the way to accelerate growth in the burgeoning sector.

The real-money gaming segment accounted for 77 percent of India's gaming sector revenues in 2022 which stood at Rs 13,500 crore, as per a recent FICCI-EY report.

In April 2023, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified new gaming-related amendments to the IT Act 2021, that will allow multiple self-regulatory organisations (SROs) to determine whether a real-money game, where the transfer of money is involved, is permitted to operate in India or not. The Union Budget 2023 also brought in TDS-related changes to the Income Tax Act, which was notified last month.

Gaming platforms will not be required to deduct tax at the source for a player if the net winning does not exceed Rs 100, The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in its guidelines that was released in May 2022.