After poking around online myself, the self-styled “definitive poker roguelike” is still available on all major platforms in North America, but it has been tagged with a 10+ ESRB rating and a disclosure for “Gambling Themes.” Notably, the UK Xbox and PlayStation stores have it listed with a PEGI 18 rating and a disclosure for “Prominent Gambling Imagery.” The Nintendo UK store, however, seems to have removed the game entirely for the time being.
Anyone who’s ever seen and/or has played Balatro knows that there’s no real gambling involved unlike the other real gambling apps on the play store and whatnot
Is this real?
The whole situation is incredibly stupid and it isn’t the dev’s fault:
Roguelike hit Balatro accused of pushing gambling, removed from stores as publisher asks fans to “stop calling this game ‘crack cocaine’ before the FDA comes after us too”
Anyone who’s ever seen and/or has played Balatro knows that there’s no real gambling involved unlike the other real gambling apps on the play store and whatnot
It’s not a parody?? Wtf
The recent post’s in-app notification seems to be the dev both raising awareness and clowning on the bullshit situation they’re unfortunately in;
not sure if the game is actually disabled (probably just not available to download/reinstall as far as can tellI)
Its also
word for word copied fromheavily inspired by the TikTok app’s notification talking about trump working to get it unbanned.John Balatro
This made me spit toothpaste all over my keyboard.