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‘Balatro’ Creator Airs Frustration Over 18-Plus Rating, Takes Jab At ‘EA Sports FC’

LocalThunk, the creator of indie poker roguelike Balatro and winner of three accolades at The Game Awards 2024 (TGA 2024), has shared frustrations over the game receiving an 18-plus rating in Europe.

Taking to X/Twitter, LocalThunk expressed his discontent over his game receiving the adult-only rating, while other games that included real-world gambling features such as loot boxes or microtransactions like EA Sports FC received a lower age rating. “Since PEGI gave us an 18-plus rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions / loot boxes / real gambling to lower that rating to 3-plus like EA Sports FC,” he mocked.

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Balatro was originally also rated as 3-plus but following its release in February this year, the European video game content rating system PEGI bumped it up to 18-plus, which led to it being briefly delisted from digital stores in some countries.

According to PEGI, the game was given its age rating due to the following:

“[The] 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.”

It should be noted that despite its rating and poker imagery, Balatro doesn’t actually involve any real-world gambling, whereas EA Sports FC prominently features in-game purchases with randomised content, similar to slot machines in real-life gambling. LocalThunk later clarified that this was the fact that frustrated him most, saying he was “way more irked at the 3-plus for these games with actual gambling mechanics for children than [he was] about Balatro having an 18-plus rating.”

The developer also added that he has reached out to PEGI to work things out, but “they [did] not see anything wrong with Balatro being rated 18+, nor with EA Sports FC (and similar games) having a 3+ rating”, citing reasons such as EU laws and storefronts for their lack of action.