Released in 2024, Balatro is clearly the video game surprise of the year. The imaginary poker game was even voted Best Independent Game 2024 at the Game Awards and was even nominated in the prestigious Best Game of the Year category.
Sold 3.5 million copies, Balatro even found its way into a physical version last September. This was an opportunity for the game to be scrutinized by the famous PEGI, the European rating system which indicates a recommended age for being able to play a video game.
Except surprise: Balatro is PEGI 18 and therefore not recommended for minors, as can be a GTA V or a Call of Duty. Balatro does not contain violence, foul language or even sexuality. However, the European evaluation system has balked at the notion of “Games of chance”.
On its dedicated PEGI sheet, we learn that Balatro would thus encourage the “gambling” because we would learn there “hands that exist in the real world” namely pairs, three of a kind and other straight flushes.
Or according to PEGI, “this knowledge and skills could be transferred to a real-life poker game” therefore also considering that poker is necessarily a gambling game — apparently, plastic chips do not exist at PEGI.
The creator Localthunk reacted strongly on the networks. He does not necessarily criticize the attribution of PEGI 18 to Balatroeven noting that he finds the red color of the pictogram rather cool. However, he notes a lack of consistency in PEGI’s decisions.
Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for making an evil card game, maybe I should add microtransactions/lootboxes/and real gambling to bring that rating down to 3+ like EA sports FC.
EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA) benefits every year from a simple PEGI 3 classification while the game contains real money bets with the FUT game mode which requires spending real money to acquire “players” during random draws. It is a system which has also been considered as gambling by the legislation of countries such as Belgium (headquarters of PEGI, by the way) and is therefore prohibited in the territory.
Note that the developer Localthunk considers itself against gambling. Last summer, he even explained that he had marked in his will that the intellectual property of Balatro could never be sold to casino brands or companies that encourage gambling.
