CHENNAI: The online gaming platforms on Thursday told the Madras High Court that the Tamil Nadu government has prohibited the real money games by imposing the blank hour period at midnight in the guise of regulating the games.
“The ban on playing the games from 12 am to 5 am is a prohibition and not regulation. The state is not empowered to prohibit the game,” said Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for an online gaming platform in the batch of cases challenging the recent regulations issued by TN Online Games Authority (TNOGA).
However, he said if the intention is to reduce the playing hours, the online game platform providers are willing to do it by disallowing a player from playing five hours in the space of 24 hours at any point of time, not from 12 am to 5 am.
The arguments were made before a division bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and K Rajasekar. The counsel said the prohibition amounted to curtailing the right of doing business guaranteed under Article 19 (1) (g) of the constitution. He questioned the rationale behind the state saying that playing online games at the time period affects public health, as playing other games or watching TV at the particular hours is not restricted.