Balatro developer 'LocalThunk' has called out ratings board 'Pan-European Game Information', A.K.A 'PEGI', for its "weirdo" decision to rate the game 18+.
The title, which recently won 'Best Independent Game', 'Best Debut Indie Game', and 'Best Mobile Game' at The Game Awards 2024, received the highest PEGI rating possible without being outright banned thanks to its apparent ability to teach players the skills and knowledge necessary for a game of poker.
LocalThunk highlighted what we've all been thinking and called out PEGI for rating games with real-life gambling mechanics, such as EA Sports FC 25, the lowest possible rating of 3+. Balatro, meanwhile, has absolutely no microtransactions or loot boxes of any kind, requiring no additional money from the player beyond the upfront cost of the game.
The developer expanded upon the original social media post and said that the decision to rate Balatro 18+ wasn't necessarily the issue, but argued that games with real-life gambling mechanics are not being rated appropriately. Honestly, we're inclined to agree. A quick search online yields immediate results in which children have rinsed their parents' bank accounts spending money on games like EA Sports FC, and while the responsibility undeniably rests with the parents, the low age rating can't be helping the situation.
Indeed, Fortnite, a title that boasts a maximum rating of 12+ across its multiple in-game modes, was found to have pushed 'dark patterns' and unwanted charges on users, leading Epic Games to pay a penalty of $540 million. But a 12-year-old can buy it with no restrictions, no worries.
It's frankly a bizarre situation in which a game that might inspire players to translate their in-game knowledge of poker to real life is rated much higher than a game that actively promotes in-game spending. But there we go.
What do you make of this whole business? Do you think Balatro's rating should be lowered, or do you think EA Sports FC's rating should be raised? Perhaps both? Let us know with a comment down below.
[source x.com]
Comments 50
Couldn't be more correct. You don't actually gamble in the game at all, it's all about beating a high score through poker hands and modifiers.
Compared to the actual gambling of Fifa/EAFC it is indeed a joke.
But we all know that.
Exactly, the rating boards are becoming more and more ridiculous, especially in the West (it unfortunately doesn't stop at rating boards there as we've apparently seen in Neptunia's case) even though it has to be said that the Japanese one has become stricter, too... again, unfortunately (self-)censorship is not only continuing, but also increasing and will keep on doing so if more and more people don't call it out - kudos to the Balatro developer for doing so!
We haven't lived in a logical society for the past couple years.
Unrelated, but I'm playing (and thoroughly enjoying) The Great Ace Attorney 2 (within Chronicles) and I'm flipping out that the game is PEGI 12, but USK 6! I mean, it's all about murders and corpses everywhere, graphics included. Every other piece of evidence has blood stains. There's a weird coroner who wants to dissect you alive for fun. I wouldn't want to leave this game anywhere near a 6 year old, German or otherwise...
Let me ask once again, what are games like Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 + 2 or Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 doing to get ESRB E10+ ratings?
Is there a way to appeal to PEGI ratings in cases such as these, that are clearly and objectively wrong?
@HammerGalladeBro
The game got E10+ for Boxing on Mario & Sonic 2020 for Mild Violence.
For Puyo Puyo games, there are some mild suggestive theme from the dialogues so the game got rated E10+.
I mean let's be honest here. The reason EA Sports FC gets such a low rating is because FIFA threw it's weight around for so many years.
It's the same with Madden and NBA. Powerful sporting bodies getting what they want.
It's not gambling if you're not losing anything.
In the meantime, Balatro should be wearing this PEGI18 like a badge of honour, the same way the "parental advisory explicit lyrics" labels made kids feel cool in the 90s.
As if anyone really cares about ratings anyway. At this point they're just a relic no one can get rid of because it would mean jobs loss and admitting they were pointless to begin with. It's like how the US medical community can never admit that circumcision is not actually necessary in the country because it would open the door for an avalanche of malpractice lawsuits.
Don't want to be the weird one here, but as an educator I do understand kids (even teenagers) should not be gambling and we as adults don't do enough to stop it. This of course becomes complex when asking what games actually suggest gambling. I mean I understand teenagers are exposed to a lot of sex and violence they technically should not see, but gambling definitely make me uncomfortable because of the serious addiction it can become. There are also big cultural differences applying and the layers of complexity added by fact that teenagers ARE exposed to content not appropriate just because of the internet.
I've been saying that since New Super Mario Bros DS and Pokemon RBY got slapped with a 12+ on 3DS/WiiU virtual console. (Which would be 18+ if they had tried to do it now)
Games like Balatro and Pokemon's fake gambling are getting higher ratings only as smokescreen for PEGI too look tough on childhood gambling.
While the actual gambling w/ lootboxes like EAFC being rated 3+ actually get to make money off children.
Obviously there's a conversation to be had if Balatro or Pokemon's slots are appropriate. But its BS while they're letting toddlers potentially wager endless amounts of real money on Lootboxes.
Who would have ever predicted this change with PEGI would screw over smaller devs while they turn a complete blinds eye to the insidious stuff big devs/publishers are doing.
@Dr_Lugae
Bingo.
While I agree with his statement about his issue with Fifa and games that have loot box style mechanics, I still agree that the 18 certificate is correct for a game that is likely to encourage gambling.
I should also add that if they didn't have such a rule then there would carnage, all that stinking gambling money fueling there future markets.
Absolutely ridiculous decision. If anything, knowledge of poker leads one to Balatro, not the other way around. And Balatro's tutorial has no mention of poker. If you don't already know it's based on poker hands, how would you be moved to go from Balatro to poker?
There is no such thing as fake gambling. Very simple. Games that feature any form of gambling should be 18+.
It's simulated gambling, which is still gambling. This is why casino's aren't allowed to have "free" versions of their games.
The only issue is that "lootboxes" aren't considered* gambling.
(* except in the Netherlands and Belgium. Which is why games like EA FC and other lootbox games are either not allowed here or get higher ratings.)
@Dee123 yep PEGI will be in the pocket of these big firms - they can cry from the rooftop that they arent but hell would freeze over the day they give an EA title like FC 25 an 18+ rating
It is a pretty clear argument for EA FC to have its rating adjusted, let’s see if Pegi buckles to its own logic
@AfroMario I watched a drunk stumble into the bookies last night.....
@sanderev Indeed, and as such, Balatro should not be rated 18+ since it doesn't include any form of gambling. There is no bet of any form. You just play hands and upgrade your deck of cards, without betting anything.
By PEGI's logic, media outlets should never report crime, as it teaches the skills necessary to commit crimes.
@KoopaTheGamer However there is a virtual cash price for playing hands which can be used to 'buy' upgrades. It can be seen as simulated gambling. Even though that isn't the main gameplay.
@dew12333 what about Balatro "encourages gambling" exactly?
@sanderev It's not gambling if you don't have a bet. If you win a Nobel prize and get a ton of money, you didn't gamble. So no, Balatro is not even simulated gambling.
@cmbaum It's based on poker......
@Lxlxrxzx I don't know if I can agree on that (entirely fake) simulation gambling is bad. I've not gambled in real life despite having played casino simulation games and gambling minigames since I was a child.
At the least, it should give an idea that you probably aren't going to win in real life. The kids have to learn at some point. Surely it is better at some before they are legally allowed to go to the casino in real life?
Maybe it's good I had something explained to me at such a young age. It was this time when M&M's did a promotion of "collect wrappers to spell MICKEY and win a trip to Disneyland". Another kid told me "they only print three of the 'C' wrappers", and that's surely exactly how they get you.
I played the "fake gambling" casino games in Super Mario 64 DS quite a lot when I was younger.
It never gave me the desire to gamble for real.
So I don't think Balatro should be rated 18+ just for featuring a game (poker) that is associated with gambling if the actual game (Balatro) features no monetary transactions of any kind, just like the casino games in Mario.
@dew12333 no it's not - it's based on Big 2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_two
@cmbaum The steam webpage advertises and sells the game as being like poker, and it's in the text above. A quick google search shows that 'The Verge', 'Gameinformer', it's wiki page all advertise is a 'poker' style game. And even the play.balatro website sub heading on google says...
"Balatro is a deck-building roguelite where you must play poker hands and earn chips to defeat enemy blinds"
Anyway Big 2 is described a gambling game too!
@dew12333 in multiple interviews Local Thunk has made clear that he initially was inspired by playing Big 2 with his fiends causally in a non-gambling context. Kind of like Hearts or Spades or other non-gambling card games. He initially started to program that game and then added in other non-gambling mechanics like the Joker system until it developed into what it is today. There are absolutely zero actual mechanics in the game that have any gambling elements whatsoever. Nor are any of the skills in the game remotely transferable to an actual gambling context (e.g. a game of poker). There are zero wagers and no "house". Moreover, the whole point is to manipulate your deck like any card roguelite game. There is no logical connection to actual gambling. By the logic being thrown out there, any video game showcasing an actual 52-card deck of playing cards should be 18+ including virtual Go Fish. Other than some of the terminology or the use of hands as basic mechanics (which by the way includes hands that don't exist in real poker such as "flush fives"), what exactly in the game encourages gambling behavior? Have you even played the game?
@cmbaum If you feel that this game or others don't promote gambling I do not want to try and change your mind or say you are wrong. I appreciate your opinion, but mine is that it is better to over protect younger people.
@dequesi "I wouldn't want to leave this game anywhere near a 6 year old, German or otherwise..."
I doubt a 6 years old can play a visual novel XD
I think PEGI just delegitimized itself.
...but if they want an 18+ game, he could always throw in a few ... extra special ... card decks in.
@dew12333 agree, it is good to be conservative. However decisions that lead to restricted access should be data driven and not based off of misunderstandings. I am not trying to stand up for the developer as much as the consumers who will miss out on this game, and I guess my biggest issue is that folks who don't understand it are jumping to bad conclusions.
Gambling is a serious issue and I think in a lot of areas there is a collective failure to address it. But if we are going to make an example out of something it should line up with something that actually does harm.
One thing you could accuse Balatro of (along with a ton of over games) is contributing to video game addiction. I feel the formula this game uses definitely can lead to that, and I'm not saying this in jest. I think there is a certain subcategory of games like this where it can be a real issue. But again, that's not what this discussion is about. I feel that most people are drawing false conclusions about this game just because it is based around a deck of playing cards and some terminology is the same as in poker.
By the way, casinos do have Classic Solitaire as a game, but if you released a Classic Solitaire video game it would not get a 18+ classification.
I will ask again: have you actually played the game? If not, I don't feel it's legitimate just to chalk this up to differences of opinion. I feel your takes are very uninformed no offense.
@Anti-Matter I'm still not convinced they should be E10+. For Mario & Sonic, Boxing is just one event of about 30, it's not like you play entire 12 round bouts or the characters show visible pain or bruises, unlike Punch-Out!! Wii.
If anything (and I'm probably stretching it here), I'd agree if it were because Peach's and Daisy's breasts. Maybe it's just me, but I swear they look bigger than usual here.
For Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 + 2, I admit I haven't finished the Story Mode of either game, but I don't think I have come across any dialogue that might give them such ratings, at most I've seen Satan (forgot his name in English) expressing his love for Arle Nadja, but it comes more as annoying than harrassing.
I also disagree with Kirby games being E10+, the circumstances of a final boss shouldn't deem the whole game with that rating. If they're going to penalize the whole game for a final boss that bleeds, might as well make every character bleed and show visible pain, and yes that's including the playable ones. Similarly, what the hey are Nintendo Land, Wii Sports Club and Nintendo Switch Sports doing for an E10+? (and no, a non-aggressive recreation of a sport is not enough for me).
Similarly, what is Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel doing to go from K-A/E on their original releases to E10+ for the Ratalaika re-release? The answer, nothing.
Games where I agree with the E10+ rating of the ones I've played are Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, Mario Strikers Charged (but not Battle League), LEGO City Undercover, the Sonic games, the Mario + Rabbids games, Pokkén Tournament, the Star Fox games + Starlink, Smash Bros., Punch-Out!! Wii and Chrono Trigger.
I'm still unsure if I agree with the E10+ of Mario Odyssey, Dragon Quest, Kid Icarus: Uprising, the Zeldas, the WarioWares and Rayman Legends.
I'm actually surprised games like Paper Mario TTYD (both the original and the remake), Super Paper Mario, the original Wii release of Epic Mickey and the SNES release of EarthBound got away with an E rating. So I agree with the bumping of ratings for the re-releases of the latter two as well as the Japanese TTYD remake being a CERO B (12 and up).
Anyway, I'm going on a real tangent here. I apologize.
I wanna give Balatro a try, but God knows I know how to play poker. Would you recommend it to someone who doesn't know how to play poker?
As a gacha gamer who generally defends the genre, I'm not gonna defend EA here.
From what I heard, their games never have any pity system, and their rates are abysmal, all in a fully priced game that never needed gacha to have fun or be seen as an intentional game design quirk, sold at an age rating that is well below the commonly accepted gacha threshold of rated-T or 12+, which is probably when a kiddo does somewhat understand the value of money. Their methods really are close to exploitative gambling, even if they aren't technically gambling
Meanwhile, a card game with a casino aesthetic and nothing more, which Sonic fans are already use to, is rated 18+
Balatro teaches you about as much about how to gamble/play poker as Yahtzee, insofar as it teaches you about pairs/full houses/straights etc. Maybe there's something there about the Tarot deck that people are sensitive about too? Anyway, it's a great game and an 18+ rating is madness.
@HammerGalladeBro, you really don't need to know how to play poker to play this. Strong recommend from me.
@dew12333 it's a roguelike deckbuilder that implements poker hands as part of its mechanics. There's no other connection to actual poker besides the fact that both utilize traditional fifty-two card decks.
Well they do have a good point. It's not really a gambling game as high score chasing is essentially the goal of the game, there is no real victory pot at the end, you only progress as far as you can. That and it's obviously all in-game currency and you never spend any real money. Calling this gambling feels like calling solitaire gambling simply because it's a classic card game.
To think that a 15 years old, going to GameStop to buy Balatro and being said no from the Clerk is soooo laughable... PEGI ratings are definitly a joke. This proves that it is managed by a bunch of people that knows nothing about the industry.
Didn’t see card games getting rated like that back in the salad days of the 8-bits.
Stuff like, you know, Accolade’s Card Sharks. Multiple forms of poker & blackjack around a green felt-topped table with chips and everything. Games like that taught us teenagers the noble art of Hold’em before the days of Ulliott, Hellmuth et al - not to mention way before we even knew there was more than just a baseball World Series.
(…what?)
@JohnnyMind While tbf, I dunno your exact views on stuff, yeah. Things have gotten insane.
I'm increasingly frustrated with this kind of thing.
I get that Poker is intrinsically associated with gambling but the base game can be played without it. Just as a base game of something like Mario Kart can have gambling added on top, anything can. But Then that’s not what the devs are upset about so it’s kinda moot here.
Honestly I agree with them on the games involving actual gambling’s age ratings. It’s about time we held the big players accountable.
@Agenerationofgens The last couple of years? More like the last couple of decades
@cmbaum no I haven’t played the game. I do remember reading about it and if I had more time and money to play more games then I would have.
PEGI seem to agree with my uninformed opinion.
@SonnyBonds You seem to have contradicted yourself there..
One of my childhood games on a bootleg multicart was Caesar's Palace, a NES game from well before the age ratings era. Somehow it never led me to gambling; if anything, it left me associating stuff like slot machines and roulettes with a strong sense of boredom as there was only so much input they required from a kid growing up largely on 8 bit platformers. Meanwhile, IRL, my very school had a mass fever around caps/pogs/whatchamacallit where you live, complete with betting/losing/winning said caps and quite likely lunch money. And pretty much everything post-Soviet tweens learned about playing cards came from older siblings and summer camp peers rather than video games.
@dew12333 thank you for you honesty
Any game with real-money randomised loot boxes should be 18+.
But PEGI are massively inconsistent. Nintendo's "51 Worldwide Games" is rated 12 specifically for gambling, so why is Balatro any higher than that?
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