From high taxes to a total ban: Gaming industry in crisis

High GST rates and TDS on earnings had slowed revenues from subscriptions and ads even before the ban on real-money online gaming

Sep 04, 2025, 12:01 IST1 min

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Imposition of a 28 percent GST rate in October 2023 and a TDS on earnings played spoilsport for the online transaction-based gaming industry in 2024 where revenues had otherwise climbed by 19.5 percent previously

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Fantasy sport and card games (rummy and poker), where revenues exceeded Rs8,000 crore in 2023, dipped by more than 7 percent the next year

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Though subscription revenues in the online gaming segment had substantially risen in 2023, they declined by over 2 percent in 2024

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Ad revenues for online gaming, which were mimicking the slowdown in the larger media and entertainment industry, grew by just about 8 percent in 2024 compared to over 18 percent in the previous year

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Startups, which saw an opportunity to grow with the proliferation of online gaming during the pandemic, have struggled with fundraising since 2021—the year they raised over $1 billion

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While over 1,000 new startups have been launched since 2020 in the erstwhile sunrise sector, the largest eight gaming companies are worth over $12 billion

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And some of these large online gaming companies have added over a thousand more jobs in 2024 along with adding 33 million new gamers to its online base, taking the total up to 488 million, the same year

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