Clown emojis all around
Balatro is a hard drug worse than heroin. We need to protect our kids from the bottomless pit of roguelite games
Thank God it’s ten dollars.
I almost downloaded it.
If you’ve ever spent money on a movie theatre ticket, you value your time at $7-$20 dollars an hour. This… is thousands of hours of entertainment.
So, you’re suggesting we make games per hour subscription? A good idea /s
I’m not saying it’s not worth ten dollars.
I just don’t feel like spending ten dollars.
Loot boxes suck but the only thing separating this game from gambling is the use of real money. It’s literally a poker game.
This is the Steam Store description -
Combine valid poker hands with unique Joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
Yeah they were always going to get PEGI 18. This moaning is just a way to sell their game.
In Balatro, the Ante is the boss’s health and chips are the amount of damage done to a boss. The poker hands are just attacks done to the boss’s health. They use poker terms because it’s inspired by card games, not because there’s gambling.
I didn’t say there was and neither did PEGI. The issue is all the terminology and visuals are gambling related. This is like giving a cigarette smoker a nicotine vape and saying it’s not cigarettes. It’s technically true but you’d be insane to authorize it for kids.
The whole point of the post is real gambling is rated as totally safe for kids. As long as it doesn’t use card or poker chips as imagery. Why is getting kids to actually gamble ok? Why is imagery associated with gambling so much worse than actual gambling for kids?
No the whole point of this post is performative outrage as marketing. They knew exactly what rating a faux casino game was going to get them.
You meant “chocolate cigarette” for your analogy, I remember they used to exists when I was a kid, don’t know if they still do.
Funny you should mention candy cigarettes.
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
This analogy is garbage. The “nicotine vape for kids” isn’t Balatro, it’s loot boxes. Balatro would be like candy cigarettes.
Funny you should mention candy cigarettes.
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
A good link, maybe image may be harmful even if it’s without context
The only gambling in this game is picking the goddamn wheel card even though I know it’s going to give me “nope!”
These games not only have poker in the name, they are literally casino sims, and you play against other players:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/384180/Prominence_Poker/
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP2070-CUSA01104_00-UPUREPOKER000001/
Both pegi 12. Your argument is flawed.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Yahtzee uses “valid poker hands” and dice for scoring too. They sell that in toy stores.
Yatzhee is dice. It uses combinations of numbers. They turn into points. Before you make any other ridiculous comparisons the idea is to perform to standard. Not to lower the standard. Gambling is a serious addiction and making games about it is a serious issue.
Yatzhee is dice.
So is craps, one of the most popular casino games on the planet.
You can’t gamble with dice?
If you want to be reductive everything is gambling. Even your birth.
I mean the kinds of gambling that might trigger someone with a gambling addiction. Isn’t that where you were coming from?
I played Yahtzee once and now I hustle back alley Craps foe drug money.
It’s literally not.
So then explain why games with actual real money gambling aren’t rated 18+, is gambling “imagery” with no gambling really that much worse than having actual gambling?
Ask PEGI why loot boxes aren’t rated 18+, I’m not defending them.
Balatro doesn’t have anything like gambling. There’s no betting. You don’t even have an opponent. The chips are only points, and the goal is to get as high a score as you can. The rules vary wildly from poker in ways that could never work with multiple players, let alone with real cards. It just looks like poker at the start and that description helps give you an initial idea of how to play.
this is starting to be horseshit. Every windows computer has a version of fucking solitare on it , there are other card based games that don’t get this treatment, and the lootboxes are actual gambling.
I thought at the start it was a type of beurocratical problem, but it’s been too long.
did you just compare solitaire to gambling?
It’s as much related to gambling as Balatro is.
That would be the point, yes. Balatro has cards and chips, but chips are just there for keeping points. If Balatro is 18+ for gambling imagery, then so should Solitaire. That would be stupid, so Balatro shouldn’t get it, either.
I think the important note is it’s not just the cards in Balatro. Is it right? Not in my opinion. You have to admit tho, that it uses waaaaay more gambling imagery (you make antes for fuck’s sake)
The term Ante in the game is used instead of “round” or “level”. It’s a measure of how far you’ve gotten. Each “ante” is made up of three “stakes”, point totals you need to beat in a set number of hands played and cards discarded.
There’s no aspect of choosing how much you risk, of “ante-ing up”, or how much you stake. You either beat the points goal (called “chips”) or you lose. There’s no playing of your hand against other hands, bluffing about how good your hand may be to convince others to fold, etc. It’s just you against the score goal. If you beat it faster than the amount of hands you’re given to work with you get extra rewards.
The game has no elements where you stake chips for rewards or anything like that. It borrows basic elements of scoring mechanics from poker, and uses a lot of poker terms for other purposes, but the closest part to gambling is the ability to buy random card packs between rounds (to customize your deck instead of just having the standard 52 card deck).
In between rounds you have access to buy various things to add further modifiers to your scoring, and to adjust the composition of your deck in order to make getting specific combinations more likely.
You can learn most of this in about 5 minutes with the demo, or by taking some time to watch someone else play on youtube.
Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (a common mechanic in roguelixe games, where going to a higher ascension/“stake” adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).
It’s near the line, I agree, I see your point, but it’s just the terminology and no gambling mechanics. You don’t set the ante, you just play. They could change the name ante to level and it would be the same. It’s not like you look at your stuff and decide how much you’re willing to risk. (You could argue skipping blinds is this sort of risk analysis like gambling but that’s hardly unique to Balatro.) There is no benefit from stopping earlier because if you lose on ante one or lose on ante seven it’s the same outcome. Also, if you choose to restart one ante one or ante seven it’s the same outcome. Because it’s just a score keeping mechanism. Nothing more.
Agreed, gambling doesn’t have to be for money or even anything tangibly real.
But it has to be for something. And in Balatro, there simply isn’t any gambling. You never wager anything to win anything based on that wager. All you have are points, and you can neither wager them, nor lose them in any way, chance-based or otherwise.
There is zero gambling in Balatro.
You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.
You should know that you’re talking about before drawing conclusions.
I haven’t played or watched Balataro but from the description on steam
You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
Unless ante here is referring to something else it seems it does have them?
“Antes” are what Balatro calls its levels. Each level consists of 3 stages, which the game calls “blinds” (small/big/boss).
In poker, you don’t “beat” an ante, it’s part of what you bet. You also don’t “reach” blinds, nor is there such a thing as a “boss blind” in poker. And the word “bet” or any synonym should be pretty conspicuous by its absence in Balatro’s description. There is no gambling without betting/wagering, after all.
So yes, if you’re familiar with poker, that description should make it obvious that the words have different meanings in the game than they do in poker.
The only actual ‘mechanic’ that’s actually the same in Balatro as in poker is what comprises the different hands, and their relative value. And even then, there are also hands in Balatro that don’t exist in poker at all (five of a kind, flush house, etc.).
Firstly you could read user names before going off, I was simply asking a question that Im unwilling to buy the game to answer.
Do you know what gambling imagery entails? It doesn’t have to be how antes actually are used in poker for it to be gambling imagery.
A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery. It doesn’t even have to be anything more than a level in a casino.
A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery.
Okay. Well, Balatro doesn’t do that–no gambling of any kind happens in the game.
So, what’s your point, exactly?
The game is literally made up of gambling imagery. From cards to chips to terms, the whole fuckin 9 yards. MY POINT IS ITS NOT GAMBLING, ITS GAMBLING IMAGERY.
I prefaced the whole fuckin statement I started with with saying it’s bullshit. DESPITE THAT BULLSHIT THE LABEL IS NOT INCORRECT. I hope you can stop being fucking obtuse and see my point after I’ve rephrased it multiple times.
Not entirely sure about the European PEGI, but the American ESRB is funded by the same companies that it regulates. It was created after the outcry about violent games and was the industry self-regulating to avoid the government getting more involved.
It is a lobby group for the industry, for better and in this case very much for worse.
I assume PEGI is little different.
PEGI and many other groups are private groups. They’re not an authority of any form. They’re not associated with government, public regulation, or public election. They’re a group of people that create their own standards outside of the ISO or any actual regulation representing the public.
Some countries do have actual public systems, but many just have these private groups that know best.
.
In Austria PEGI is “enforced” in Vienna while USK is “enforced” in Salzburg (and Germany, the reason why they buy all their games here). And PEGI might be shit, but USK is a million times worse.
USK rated Balatro with a minimum age of 12 because of “elements resembling gambling”. Sounds more reasonable to me than the PEGI rating.
German Authorities (technically not USK but USK is affiliated to them completely banned Wolfenstein, Dying Light, etc. Not 18+ or whatever it’s straight up illegal to promote or openly sell them in Germany.
I can kind of understand Wolfenstein, as Germany does seem to have this thing where they do and also don’t want to face their past.
But Dying light is a generic zombie game.
This is all well and true, but it’s important to note that these organizations exist as a sidestep to regulation, they are formed by industry insiders as a promise to the regulators that they will be honest about how they rate games (or movies or music) so that the government doesn’t actually get involved and do it’s job.
It’s a form of regulatory capture that allows the industry itself to decide what is harmful to us.
It’s basically the definition of conflict of interest.
i got curious and looks like PEGI is somewhat similar at least. The ISFE is a self-regulating/co-regulating (w/e that means) body. There seem to be some kinda independent audits but… Looks like they don’t audit so good, if this article is evidence
but… Looks like they don’t audit so good, if this article is evidence
That’s the whole issue with it being a lobby group. It makes them a ton of money, so they are incentivised against making a rating for it because that would draw more attention/limit sales.
And that’s where the whole government lobbying part comes in.
Right i was just clarifying what i learned about PEGIs setup, that it seems similar to the US’s ESRB. I’m a yank and didn’t know before looking either
In fairness, I would much rather that than governments directly controlling access, creating an additional form of direct censorship.
Not saying what we have now is great or anything though. I’m not exactly defending it.
That’s basically why the ESRB was created, it was “Self-Regulate, or we’re just going to ban 80% of games on the market as a scapegoat for Columbine!”
Luigi Mangione played Among Us, an assassination game!
I largely agree, but the interests have gotten misaligned. Back then it was the threat of regulation which changed things up, I think the governments should do a little more of that.
Eeeeh, at least then there would theoretically be public accountability. The FCC has limited censorship power that they’re generally unobjectionable with.
I’m honestly more concerned with the censorship from private enterprises than with government consorship currently. Less accountability and less recourse.
It also really only becomes censorship if the rating system is used to prohibit speech. If we instead made it more like the nutritional guidelines on food it could instead give more of a content breakdown than setting an arbitrary age.
To clarify: the ESRB is the rating arm. The ESA that runs it? That’s the lobbying arm.
Why is he still using Twitter? Does he want a bunch of Nazis replying to him?
Because, unfortunately, millions of people still use it. If you’re selling a product, it’s in your best interest to have as much social media presence as possible.
Also, it’s better to have an official presence on those platforms so others can’t impersonate you as easily.
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If you’ve ever made a thing that took so much time that it has to be your job, and earn you money, you’d likely have a different view. If you’re ignoring a percentage of your target market because they’re on a platform you don’t like, then your project might fail, and you don’t get to keep your house.
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If your stated downside to still using Twitter is that it’s a waste of time, is that invalidated if your posting tool posts to all of your socials with one click? Like most professional social media users that have to maintain a bunch of channels with the same content?
Also, who is being dramatic about how important it is to be on or off twitter?
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Ok… but his thing can actually happen… your version of the bad things that can happen for still also posting news to twitter is all imaginary stuff that doesn’t happen in real life. Being upset about the direction Twitter and Reddit took and are taking is a totally valid, and honestly the objectively correct position to have about it. But adding in imaginary penalties for using it is not.
Then there should also be a version of the post on Mastodon, and this post should be a screenshot of that one.
Twitter can reach various community from variety of region, like English Asia Twitter.
Entire fediverse is still mostly Western community.
Twitter is by far the larger platform, and small independent creators have to work to promote their game on every platform they can, if they want to succeed. The moral high ground of not using undesirable social media sites is nice, but isn’t fair to people who are partially dependent on those platforms to make a living.
Also, the simple fact is that there is no reason that any entity promoting their product has to choose any of these platforms over the other–you can just post to all of them, every single one that has enough users to be worth posting to.
I’ve seen several small creators say they get 10 times the engagement on Bluesky. That includes sales through promo links, which can’t be faked. It’s becoming clear that X’s numbers are mostly illusory at this point.
I wish lawmakers had some balls on this subject. If there’s gambling, they should have to register as a gambling company and comply with all the other restrictions on gambling advertisements in each jurisdiction.
The problem here is that Baltaro does not have gambling. It just uses cards and chips as the basis for playing the game. Like Magic the Gathering or Inscryption.
Using chips is even a stretch honestly. There are some chip imagery here and there but otherwise ‘chips’ are just how points are called.
Exactly you never actually commit to any sort of wager or even an imitation of financial risk.
Is there betting (such as buy-in / ante) in Balatro?
Is there in MtG?
No, there are no bets, no buy in.
There used to be ante in MTG. You’d play for cards in each other’s decks and were to keep them if you won the game. Plus, there were a number of cards actively interacted with the ante’d cards and added or changed what’s in the ante
They also base it on poker, yeah cards can transform each other but it’s still quite literally a poker game. This isn’t MTG. (Which is just real life loot boxes)
But poker is only a gambling game because when you play it you “give up” something of value in the hope of winning more through playing and randomness. What makes it gambling is not the cards or the chips it’s the gambling aspect. Balatro uses card and poker hands, and so does “yatzhee”, but it does not use any gambling mechanic. Lootboxes on the other hand use gambling mechanic.
Which is why PEGI didn’t say it was literally gambling, they said it was imagery of gambling.
Although you may be right about why they did it, I feel like imagery of gambling is not meant to be ‘something that is in any way related to something that happens to be gambling’, it’s when gambling is shown but you’re not the one gambling. If someone in game is gambling that’s imagery, if a game uses cards for something that is not gambling it’s not imagery.
They haven’t understood the game at all, I wonder if they even looked at it for more than two minutes
Run game > see playing cards and poker chips > close > PEGI 18
They’re not looking into blatant gambling in AAA titles, of course they won’t take a closer look into an indie game. They’re completely useless.
It can’t be that easy. PEGI says that games containing gambling (real money or not) are rated with PEGI 12 to 18. So there must be something else to the game that led to this rating.
or…you know… they’re just morons.
Maybe winning a game award while being solo developer studio, it feels like this to me
Ah, but there are also tarot cards, which is spooky Occult voodoo magic. Balatro backwards might spell “Satan is Lord” in some ancient druidic script.
Praise Otralab!
* ortalaB
Fuck PEGI, their ratings always sucked and weren’t useful at all. Full blown swearing? 13+. One cigar through 500 hours of gameplay? Adults only. Never cared, never will.
Violence and gore? 13+. Some boobs? Adults only.
Killing good, love bad.
And people pretend that only American ratings systems pull this kind of bullshit.
If anybody knows about love it’s rimjob_rainer.
Steer clear of clowns emojis, bub.
Are all game rating systems just complete and utter garbage? Dare you to find a good one.
Critiquing Doge on steam
The ESRB isn’t awful, it’s not perfect of course, but I think it’s pretty dang good for what it is.
I mean the point of all rating systems in the US was fear of government regulation of content and having to fight that particular legal battle. It basically exists because moral busybodies were upset about Night Trap, Mortal Kombat and Doom.
Yes, this is true. And I think the industry managed to pull together a pretty decent one.
Wait, wasn’t this already an issue a while back and wasn’t that resolved?
It was banned by a few countries for looking like a gambling game which was a separate thing, now it’s just rated as an adult game by PEGI.
Right - I was thinking of the brief store pull.
But I thought that got resolved with the game getting the 18+ PEGI rating back in March already?
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/03/balatro-back-on-switch-eshop-in-europe-with-new-age-rating
Or was it like a provisional rating?
I’m hopelessly addicted to gatcha. When I saw this I bought Balatro.
I still wonder why the hell is this game classified as a roguelike? It’s poker mixed with MTG. Also, why are you crying dude? You made a literal slot machine.
It has rouge features of building up a lot of utility in each run
No, rouge is the stuff that ladies put on their cheeks. You mean rogue, as in wildcard, untameable, privateer.
Yes thank you
Semi-permanency is not a defining feature of roguelikes, in most of them every run starts from scratch.
That’s why he said roguelite. Semipermanency (being able to unlock upgrades for future runs) is what separates the roguelite from a roguelike. In a roguelike, every run you start from 0, in a roguelite you unlock things that make differences in future runs (in the case of balatro: different decks, new jokers, …)
Examples:
Hades is a roguelite.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a roguelike.
Why should we care what a talking horse pseudo-plinco game thinks should be the age rating of their competitors?
It’s a good question
Wut? Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is the European equivalent of ESRB. Their ratings matter because they have an obvious bias against indies, which hurts their sales.
I was jokingly referring to PEGGLE
Ah. I’m guessing most people missed the joke :)
Yeah they should’ve gone with Hank Hill’s wife
That’s the fun part, you don’t have to care. The first and only step is to just keep scrolling—better luck next time.
When I was young I always wondered why the nhl games had a 16+ rating and Fifa had 3+. Figured both of them where ordinary sports.
Apparently fighting automatically shoots that nhl rating to the same level as GTA and balantro.
let’s just do like all parents buying the last Call of Duty to their 10-year-old and just don’t give a fuck about PEGI.
The thing is, this is likely going to affect their sales to some degree.
As a parent, you may have age lock on your child’s account, or search games by rating, or just not know what this game is when asked to buy it but judging by rating.I don’t know how significant of an impact that is, but it’s unfair.
I think they’ve done them a favour in a way. If this was day one then it might hurt them but they’re past the point of like 90% of their sales I bet, and now pegi looking like incompetent dinosaurs is just a free second wave of social media exposure
One of the big advantages of steam and online storefronts in general is that it bypasses PEGI / ESRB and their unnecessary Draconian nonsense.
