The Indian Association of Game Publishers and Developers (IGPDA) was recently inaugurated to support Prime Minister Modi of India in his strategic vision of India as a global game and telecentre. Based on the newly enacted Cyber Game Act, the Association will serve as a unified voice platform for Indian game makers, promoting “India makes” IP development, skills development and global competitive 3A game creation.
The Association ‘ s first cooperation project is to work with the State of Maharashtra to establish Mumbai as a game industry hub through policy support and industrial investment. Founding members included the leading Indian players in the game world: Nazara Technologies, Game, nCore Gomes, SuperGaming, Relance Gomes, Tara Gaming, underDoGS Studio, Aeos Gomes and Dot9 Gomes.
This followed the establishment of the Indian Institute of Creative Technology (IICT), a centre of excellence designed to be a lighthouse for Indian AVGC-XR ecology (covering animation, visual effects, games, cartoons and the expansion of real-life innovation). Nitish Mitsain, Chief Executive Officer of Nazara, said: “Nazara has always had an IP-driven growth vision, and IGPDA is highly compatible with this mission to ensure that Indian creativity flourishes globally and creates sustainable long-term values.”
The Chief Executive Officer of Reliance Games, Amit Kanduja, stressed: “We are committed to advancing the vision of ‘India makes, serves the world’, through IGPDA, by producing original 3A games to bring Indian ideas and stories to the global audience.”
Despite the fact that the game market in India had surpassed $1 billion in 2025, the Government suddenly banned gold games a few days after the enactment of the new bill, causing disruption in the industry. This has seriously shaken investor confidence: of the $2.8 billion foreign investment in the Indian game market between 2019 and 2024, nearly $2.5 billion went to the real-gold field.
As India’s leading game company, Nazara Technologies suffered a significant impact on the real money game ban. Nazara held 46.07 per cent of the shares of Moonshine Technologies, the PokerBazi parent company, and its market value fell from $1.5 billion to $1.24 billion, a decline of about 17 per cent, despite its claim that there was no direct money to play. This decline reflects the market’s concern about the indirect impact of the ban on real-money games, especially as Nazara’s expansionist strategy on mergers and acquisitions (such as Fusebox Gomes and Curve Studios) may be under financial pressure. Chief Executive Officer Nitish Mittersain stated that the ban would not affect the corporate income as a whole or EBITDA, but acknowledged that the industry was experiencing “disturbation, investor tension and employment effects”.
The establishment of IGPDA provided a new direction for the industry. The Association plans to reshape the market through non-real money games and electronic games and to use Maharashtra policy support to attract investment. Despite the damage to the valuations of companies such as Nazara in the short term, the IP-driven strategy of IGPDA in the long run could revive the Indian game industry.
