It’s entirely his fault for not being a multi-billion dollar company which actively invests in better ratings. In capitalism, there is no fairness - there is only money.
This reminds me of the documentary “This film is not yet rated”. The point was that the MPAA gives way more leniency to big budget studios when giving ratings. The net effect of this is it kills the low budget films before they can be released.
Yeah came here to echo the same sentiments. He isn’t establishment. Aka he has no voice. As money is speech in America.
PEGI is European; the ESRB gave Balatro a E10+ for “gambling themes”
And that’s honestly exactly what I would expect. It’s not suitable for a 4yo, but there’s nothing in it to warrant a teen rating either. So yeah, E with a note sounds exactly right.
Sure if we were talking about a reasonable, independent ratings agency with the public good as its primary guiding factor. But both the ESRB and PEGI are private, industry run and funded ‘self-regulatory’ agencies that operate with the industries own self interests as its primary guiding factor.
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While you’re not wrong, I doubt the Pan European Game Information ratings board cares that much about speech in America.
Right but America bad please clap
You’re confusing PEGI (the European games rating body) with ESRB (the American equivalent).
PEGI has ratings 3, 7, 12, 16, and 18, and it gave Balatro the highest rating of 18.
ESRB has ratings E, E10+, T, M, and A, and it gave Balatro the relatively low E10+ rating.
Hes no EA, but Balatro has made him a multimillionaire.
He needs to use some of that money to sue, maybe get the orgs that are fighting gambling/microtransactions onboard.
Lol, I love how even the good Americans are still so into US Defaultism and can’t comprehend that other countries exist.
One looks like gambling but is actually a fun roguelite card game, the other one looks like fun but is actually a gambling game. Guess which one is rated 18+?
spoiler
Okay I lied, FC24 doesn’t even look like fun, but that’s my personal opinion.
The reasoning in question:
This game teaches - by way of images, information and gameplay - skills and knowledge that are used in poker. During gameplay, the player is rewarded with ‘chips’ for playing certain hands. The player is able to access a list of poker hand names. As the player hovers over these poker hands, the game explains what types of cards the player would need in order to play certain hands. As the game goes on, the player becomes increasingly familiar with which hands would earn more points. Because these are hands that exist in the real world, this knowledge and skill could be transferred to a real-life game of poker
So, this game teaches skills and knowledge that are used in poker. The skills in knowledge are limited to… playing and making poker hands. That’s it. Also, “as the game goes on, the player becomes increasingly familiar with which hands would earn more points” – is hilariously funny. The idea that knowledge of what a poker hand is is anything related to the dangers of gambling is ridiculous.
As the game goes on, the poker hands also get increasingly unrealistic and different from real poker including things like five of a kind, and a pair being worth more than a royal flush.
If you tried to take the skills you learn from balatro to a poker table you would get kicked out basically immediately.
I place a torn up joker on the table, a tarot card, a llanowar elf card, and a pair of threes
“So with my score multiplier basically I own the casino.”
The dealer frantically calls security
“This is worth eighteen bazillion chips. Here is five dollars.”
“I’m sorry, the Llanowar Elves are banned, you should keep up with the meta” Activates the Pot of Greed and draw two.
“Sir, you can’t bring stone slabs to the table and play them as if they were cards. Also, where did these glass shards come from?”
I’ve never gambled, but I’m pretty sure if I got 1.630e11 chips at a casino, something bad would happen to me, the casino, and the economy if I cashed it out. I think that’s 84 billion chips…
It’s 163 Billion chips.
1.630e11 is the same as 1.630 x 10^11
Which probably wouldn’t be that bad for the economy, but it might bankrupt the casino, depending on the value of the chips.
Whoops, off by a bit, lol
Times are different now, there’s no more turning up in a ditch. If you start winning too often, they’re gonna keep an eye on you and try to determine if you’re cheating. If you’re not, they’re gonna ask you to leave and ban you from the casino before you can actually win anything significant — the justification given is that it’s their casino and they can refuse entry to whoever they want. If you are cheating, then you’re just going to jail.
I had a run where I legitimately had to stop and compare the point values a Two Pair Vs. One Pair Vs. Straight Flush
And ONE PAIR wound up being the one with the highest point value…
I was still 600 dollars short of winning against the Boss Blind, ending my run
One “teaches” you to gamble, the other allows you to gamble. And the one that just teaches you has a higher rating. Crazy.
Totally his fault for not heeding the ancient warning.
Give a man a fish, you get PEGI 3+. Teach a man to fish, 18+ you sucker.
My thief archer build in Morrowind and Skyrim lead me to a life of thievery and now I’m serving a life sentence at maxium security prison. Very sound logic.
It’s really dumb if you know the two games (poker and Balatro).
Poker is a game of incomplete information where you need one single higher ranked hand than your opponent per round. The stakes are money you bet that your hand is better. Bluffing is an important part of the game.
Balatro is mostly a game with complete information (apart from the order of remaining cards in your deck and certain bosses that flip your cards). You bet no money. There is no bluffing. Money does not correlate to chips. It is about the rating of your hand (poker has no rating, only relative ranking). You play multiple hands. You can’t fold. Bluffing doesn’t exist. Cards can be improved, ratings can be improved, the decks can look nothing like poker decks, etc.
I know this is anecdotal but I’m now living in a ditch because of Balatro. I never gambled before in my life and all the poker knowledge Balatro me taught caused me to start extreme gambling and now I’m dead in a ditch.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Can’t. I’m a little too dead for pics
have some passerby take the picutres, you dummdumm
Ok, I’ll believe you this time…
I wonder what they rated Pavlov VR, ya know the FPS game in VR that forces you to handle guns the way they would in real life and is popular with ex-military because of their transferrable skills?
I mean that would definitely get an 18 rating, I’m not sure what you are meaning to say
This is actually quite eye opening to me, as someone who doesn’t really ever have to look at ratings as a consumer and has always just taken them for granted. Now I’m keenly aware it’s yet another example of runaway capitalism. Just never thought too hard about it.
PEGI’s a cunt.
Actual gambling - 3+
Suggestion of gambling - 18+
The queen of hearts is inherently obscene, that’s why my copy of Alice in Wonderland is rated 18+
there are actual poker games that are rated lower than 18 too.
Clown world clown world
IRL poker cards from the dollar store - !
Is the rating purely because it uses playing cards? Poker hands?
Yahtzee and literal poker with betting are included in Nintendo clubhouse/worldwide 51 and it’s rated Pegi-12.
Would balatro get a pass if it used cards numbered 1-13 instead of traditional cards?
This whole thing is bonkers.
Anyone can walk into a store and buy a deck of cards.
I bet the gift shop of any casino in Las Vegas would sell a souvenir deck of cards to a kid without a second thought.
Kmart and target both sell literal “poker kits” with decks of cards and chips with no restriction on who can buy it. In the toy section with the other board games no less.
Where the fuck are you going to Kmart?
He’s Australian, Kmart is still fully operational in kangaroo land
The logical conclusion is that Australia isn’t just “down under,” it’s the underworld where call failed American chains go after they die.
Okay then, how does Hungry Jacks fit into that chain of logic?
Burger King just hasn’t died yet.
Well, the burgers are better at hungry jacks!
Let’s go to Venture!
If it wasn’t for regulations, they’d happily let the kids shovel their money into the slots.
Used to do that all the time as a kid, but a slot machine taking 2 pence a time is a far cry from one where you give it your bank card and go ham.
Sounds like grounds for a defamation suit to me considering his stated opinions on gambling.
In the meantime we can start guessing which side has more money to hire lawyers
Tell me you are corrupted to the core, without telling me you are corrupted to the core.
I wish this trend would die out. Tell me your x without telling me your x is so fucking pretentious and annoying.
Tell me you’re on the internet too much without telling me you’re on the internet too much.
He’s JustAnIdiot. PlsIgnore.
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You and I are in the real world right now.
Pretentious though?
Pretentious - attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
Yes.
You and I have wildly different associations with this construct.
To me it sounds like silly phrasing. Just another version of “doth protest”
i think it’s clear from this these regulatory bodies primarily function to help the industry make money. indies can sometimes get co-signs from these bodies, but only if they stay in their lane. balatro has been a huge smash hit, and it feels like this body just wants to keep it down that little bit
Self-regulated organization my ass.
Well, they /are/ self regulated. Just not the way that anyone but them wants.
I’m willing to bet PEGI was lobbied to push for that 18+ rating by ea and other publishers because balatro is taking revenue from them. They don’t get how a game without microtransactions is doing better than they are
No need to lobby, EA are the ones making the decision
Learning the names and ranking of poker hands is the devil!
Dragon Quest 11 has a T-for-Teen rating and it’s got a literal casino built into the game. Roulette, poker, and slot machines. This isn’t even uncommon for JRPGs. Curious how the ratings agencies just glaze over this fact when assigning their scores.
Just needs a good cover. Like Watership Down. Nice lil thing about bunnies.
They probably have some checklist which has vague definitions of “glamourising” gambling. I reckon this game unwittingly strays into the red tape in its presentation along with the poker theme (like I’ve said elsewhere it’s more a maths game than a poker game). The music and lights despite being atmospheric and ambient probably have some similarities to fruit machine like environments in the sense the music is repetitive and there is flashing visual feedback.
Edit: Should say it’s still B.S. to rate it 18. Just that I can imagine ratings boards can’t apply independent thought/logic.
Doesn’t matter in the slightest.
me, age 12, San Andreas
18 is the highest rating. It’s equivalent to the ESRB “AO” rating, and many storefronts will not sell it, period.
Doesn’t matter to a kid with a phone and unlimited time and willpower. I know with 100% certainty, if I was 16 and wanted to play Balatro, I wouldn’t be talking to you, I’d have an .apk already.
Storefront? Lmao.
Piracy being the only way to get a game isn’t beneficial to the dev, and Balatro is the kind of game that deserves our money. It could have easily been jammed to the gill with paid boosts premium decks, etc, but instead, they just made a good game.
I went looking for a patreon or donation page… Guys who get hit with this should just go that route. He doesn’t have a general one up.
We can’t control the bullshit, but we can side-step it.
Baltaro devs may need to invest in gambling to earn enough money to bribe PEGI the way EA almost certainly does.
What do you mean, almost? EA is literally a member of Video Games Europe, the organization which manages PEGI.
You didn’t ask the question the ea way.
You’re supposed to ask with a hefty bribe.
Don’t need a bribe when EA is the one on the board doing the ratings.
Any proof of this?
