Anushruti Singh
In a recent announcement, Google revealed its plans to broaden support for real-money games (RMG) on the Play Store, allowing a wider range of games in this category while adhering to local regulations. The tech giant shared that the extended program for real-money gaming will commence in India, Brazil, and Mexico starting June, with plans for further expansion into additional countries in the future. Alongside this initiative, Google is also exploring a new service fee model for subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Supporting Google’s decision, Roland Landers, CEO of the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF), expressed his endorsement of the progressive move.
“We have been advocating the same for and believe that this will give a big boost to the Indian online gaming industry, where over 70 per cent of the revenue is generated by Pay to Play platforms,” he said.
According to him, this decision will help with responsible innovation and provide a bouquet of choices to the Indian consumer. “It will especially help MSMEs and new developers/platforms who will be able to compete with established companies and will substantially bring down the user acquisition and other associated costs. We look forward to engaging with Google while it evolves the detailed policy and hope that the policy will be truly inclusive and help democratise online gaming in India,” he added.
Earlier today, Karan Gambhir, Director of Global Trust and Safety Partnerships at Google, stated in a blog post that since 2021, a wider range of real-money gaming (RMG) apps category has continued to flourish with developers creating new RMG experiences for mobile. To keep up with the pace of developer innovation, and bring more RMG apps to Android users, Google has launched a pilot program in three regions including India.
“Our updated approach aims to align with the distinctive economic dynamics and diverse developer revenue models prevalent within the RMG sector.” blog read.
For developers in the Google Play Pilot Program for distributing DFS and Rummy apps to users in India, Google has extended the grace period for pilot apps to remain on Google Play until June 30, 2024 when the new policy will take effect. After that time, developers can distribute RMG apps on Google Play to users in India, beyond DFS and Rummy, in compliance with local laws and Google’s updated policy.
