The Government of India has imposed a 28% GST on online gaming, casinos and horse riding recently. At the 50th meeting of the GST (Goods and Services Tax), it was decided to impose a 28% GST on online gaming, casinos and horse racing.

In the meeting, the GST on uncooked/unfired snack pellets, cancer medicine and imitation zari thread was reduced. Niramala Sitharaman, the finance minister, made clear that the GST imposed on these gambling streams was not done with any intent to end any industry.

The finance minister said that the discussion that happened was on the moral grounds of whether these should be taxed at the same rate as the essential items. The finance minister also said that the GST council’s decision focused on the taxation part of online gaming and it will align with the regulation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The tax on these online gaming companies will be imposed without considering whether the games require skill or were based on chance and there will be an amendment in the GST law to tweak the definition of actionable claim, the finance minister added.

The online gaming companies have said that this decision will disturb the online gaming industry and it will affect gaming volumes and the viability of gaming companies. The 28% GST is an obstacle on the road for players to making more money.

The platform fee imposed earlier was 18% GST. However, the gaming companies can protect their profit margins by transferring the burden of GST to the customers, but that will lead to a major fall in the number of subscribers and overall investment into the online gaming industry.

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On July 11, 2023, the Government of India said that a 28% tax on funds will be imposed on the total amounts the online gaming companies collect from users.

These online gaming companies became very popular right when they came out. After the introduction, India yielded a large amount of money for these companies.

The online gaming industry is worth about $1.5 billion and has attracted foreign investment due to its immense popularity. Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitaraman, has detailed that the decision to impose the tax on the total amounts of these gaming companies was taken after consultation with the states. She added that there was no intent to hurt the industry.

The industry representatives are not that convinced by this statement that they said this imposing tax would narrow down their earnings and extra charges were likely to be passed on to customers.

The gaming apps in India are advertising and endorsing famous athletes in India. The majority of these athletes belong to the Indian Premier League or IPL. The IPL is the franchise cricket league tournament conducted annually in India.

The revenue of these platforms rose by 24% from last year to over $342 million during the IPL cricket matches with over 61 million users participating, Redseer consultancy said this month.

Cricket is the most popular sport in India, and the brand ambassadors of these online gaming companies are cricketers. Hence, the popularity of these companies reached every corner of the country.

The other side of this coin is that addiction and financial losses are a tremendous number surrounding these companies. On the app Dream11, users can create their teams for just Rs 8 with a total prize pool of Rs 1.2 million.

These apps offer the ‘legal gambling’ experience where India has not legalized gambling other than in Goa.

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Blizzard has confirmed that the Warcraft game is going to launch for mobiles in 2022. The company confirmed as it is working on it. The confirmation was already made during the Q4 2021 report from Activism Blizzard. Earlier, the company reported that it wants to bring Warcraft to mobile devices. But this was the first time the company Blizzard revealed its launch date 2022.

The quarterly report from Blizzard said – “planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time.”

Warcraft is coming to the mobile platform but still, there has been no clarity of its game details. There has been no confirmation of its genre or what elements of the warcraft universe it will be featuring. Still, this is great news for fans of the popular MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) franchise.

As per gossip, Blizzard has been reported working on AR-based game. This is similar to Pokemon Go, but as the company is already working on  “multiple Warcraft mobile experiences,” this could be just a part of it.  Also, Warcraft’s Diablo: Immortal mobile title is also being planned for the first half of 2022, as per sources.

Activision Blizzard is also in the news that it will be acquired by Microsoft. The deal is likely to close by end of fiscal Q4, 2023. And then, Microsoft may gain control of major franchises like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch.

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