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Demo play, no-deposit offers and free tournaments in India
Four questions and the rule behind each one. This page names no operator and carries no commercial link, because a page about the law of a market should not also be an advertisement inside it.
| Question | Answer | What the rule says | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public demo without an account | A game with no stake and no money prize appears to sit outside the definition of a money game. | Primary source | |
| Age verified before the demo | Not provided for by the act where there is no stake. | Primary source | |
| No-deposit offers | Forbidden as part of a money game, whose promotion is itself forbidden. | Primary source | |
| Free tournaments | A tournament with a money prize would fall under the ban. | Trade source |
- Authority
- Governo dell’Unione, legge del 2025
- Official register
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- Minimum age
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- Self-exclusion and help
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A statute that draws its line exactly where this site draws its own
The whole of this record rests on one distinction, which is the difference between a game played for money and the same game played for nothing, and most legal systems arrive at that distinction by accident. India legislated it on purpose in 2025, with three definitions and three prohibitions, and the result is the most explicit treatment of the subject in our collection (an act of the Union Parliament, numbered 32 of 2025).
The line the statute draws is the "stake", and it draws it in a definition rather than in a schedule. A game becomes an "online money game" when it is played by paying fees, depositing money or putting up other stakes in the expectation of winning, with a return in money, and the drafting adds that it makes no difference whether the game turns on "skill", on chance, or on both of them together (a formula that closes the oldest argument in this trade in a single clause).
What sits on the other side of the line has a name of its own, which is unusual and useful. An "online social game" is one offered without a stake and provided solely for entertainment, recreation or the development of skill (section 2, subsection 1, clause i), and the name alone is worth more than several pages of guidance elsewhere in this record.
We find the drafting admirable and the consequence uncomfortable, and both halves of that sentence belong on this page; the act is friendly to a game played for nothing and extremely hostile to anybody who advertises the other kind, which puts a record like ours on both sides of one statute at once!
The three definitions, read in the order they bite
The definition of a money game is wider than its name suggests, and the widening is done by a second definition sitting beside it. "Other stakes" means anything recognised as equivalent to money or convertible into it, and the statute names "credits", "coins" and "tokens" among its examples (section 2, subsection 1, clause j).
That clause is where a careless free-play model comes apart. A "demo" running on "credits" that can be bought, or on "coins" convertible into anything of value, is not a social game at all on this reading. It is a money game wearing an unfamiliar interface (convertibility is the test, and not the label printed on the counter).
A trial running on tokens that cannot be bought and cannot be exchanged for anything of value looks very different under the same definition (a "play money" balance, in the ordinary sense of the term). Nothing has been paid, nothing is returned, and the expectation of winning that the first definition requires is simply absent, which is why the first answer above is a partial one rather than a refusal.
"Electronic sports" are carved out of the money-game definition expressly, which tells you something about what the drafters were and were not worried about when they wrote it. The exclusion is narrow and it is specific (one carve-out, and no others), and we read it as confirming that the general definition was meant to be as wide as it looks.
The three prohibitions, and the people they reach
The first prohibition is addressed to everybody rather than to a licensee; its list of verbs is the part to read twice (five verbs, and one of them is "abet"). No person shall offer, aid, abet, induce or otherwise engage in the offering of an online money game (section 5, subsection 1), so there is no licensing route anywhere in the act and no compliant version of the activity to apply for.
The second prohibition is the one that touches a site of this sort; it is drafted with the same breadth, and it is addressed to the same wide class of persons. Making or facilitating an advertisement that directly or indirectly promotes or induces any person to play an online money game is prohibited. The penalty is set out separately (section 6 carries the prohibition, and section 9 carries the consequence of breaching it).
"Indirectly" is the word that matters here, and we are not going to pretend otherwise about it. A page that describes where a real-money casino can be found, in a market where offering that casino is itself unlawful, is a long way from safe under a provision drafted in those terms.
The third closes off the money. Banks and intermediaries are forbidden to process payments for online money gaming services (section 7, which operates on the money rather than on the game), and that is a mechanism several other jurisdictions in this record have reached for while India has written it into primary legislation.
A free game that uses convertible credits is not a free game here
The definition of a stake in the Indian act extends to anything equivalent to money or convertible into it, and credits, coins and tokens are named. A "practice play" mode that sells its own currency falls on the money side of the line, whatever the interface calls the balance.
Where a demo falls, and where a link falls
Put the pieces together and the Indian position on free play is clearer than the Indian position on a site like this one. A trial with no stake and no monetary return appears to sit outside every one of the three prohibitions, because each of the three operates on the definition of a money game and that definition has not been satisfied (not satisfied, and therefore not engaged).
The age question answers itself in the same way, which is why the second box above reads as it does. The act imposes no age requirement for a game played without a stake, and that absence is a consequence of the structure rather than an omission somebody forgot to fix; where the definition is not met, none of the duties in the act arise at all.
The "offers" answer is a flat refusal. The reasoning behind that answer proceeds in two steps, and both of them come from the statute itself. A "no deposit" offer is part of the apparatus of a money game, the offering of such a game is prohibited outright, and the promotion of it is prohibited again by a separate provision, so no corner survives in which such an offer might lawfully sit!
A cross-check from a very different source points the same way, and it is worth a line because it shows how the market reads the risk. In an industry notice of 16 January 2026 the Nevada gaming regulator listed India among the jurisdictions it treats as presumptively prohibited for online gambling products, alongside nine others (a notice from one American state regulator, read as a cross-check and not as Indian law).
The unanswered rows, and the two that stay empty
The tournament box above rests on our own construction rather than on a published answer, and we have marked it accordingly. A "freeroll" that pays a prize in money would, on the definitions set out above, be an online money game however free the entry happened to be (free to enter, and paying in money, which is the awkward combination), and we could not find anything stating that conclusion in terms.
Two rows of the panel at the top of this page are empty for a reason that has nothing to do with the statute and everything to do with the absence of a "licence" system. We did not identify a central register of authorised operators, because there is no licensing regime here to maintain one, and no national exclusion scheme or helpline could be named here with any confidence.
The second of those absences is the one we mind (the first is a structural fact, while the second is a hole). A reader who needs help in India is not served by this page, and the honest thing is to say so plainly rather than to fill the row with a service we have not verified.
If you want to read the act for yourself, it is published on the Union's own legislative portal and it can be finished in an afternoon (a single act, of thirty-odd pages, which we read there on 20 October 2026). Your own reading should start with the definition of a stake, because every prohibition in the statute is built on top of it.
Where does the Indian act draw its line?
At the stake. A game played by paying fees, depositing money or putting up other stakes in the expectation of winning is an online money game, whether it turns on skill or on chance.
Do purchasable credits count as a stake?
Yes, where they are equivalent to money or convertible into it. The act names credits, coins and tokens, so a trial that sells its own currency falls on the money side of the line.
Is a trial without money caught by the act?
It appears not, because nothing has been paid and nothing is returned, and that is why the first answer on this page is a partial one rather than a refusal.
What does the act say about advertising?
It forbids making or facilitating an advertisement that directly or indirectly promotes or induces any person to play an online money game.