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.
I recently played it. If anything I think it has a subtle anti-gambling message.
The more hands you play, the more you realize you can’t actually win without “cheating”
Play it like poker? Congrats, you’re fucked, you literally cannot win against the blind.
Stack the deck in your favor with creative use of Joker cards and a few dozen extra aces? The game becomes trivial
If the game teaches you anything it’s that if you play by the rules, the house will ALWAYS win.
I just played it last night, and then again today with my kids watching. I explained how the hands are scored, and they seemed to get the gist of it.
It has absolutely nothing to do with gambling. You don’t wager anything, there’s no opponents, and the terminology is all different, for example:
- blind - in poker, it’s a forced bet based on sitting position from the dealer; in Balatro, it’s where you’re at in the “level” (and only the “boss blind” is required)
- ante - in poker, it’s the minimum bet to participate; in Balatro, it’s the level you’re on
- hand - in poker, it’s the cards you are dealt, and you play them all; in Balatro, it’s a scoring action, and you only play a subset of your cards in a given “hand”
And so on. The only thing that’s actually similar is the hand scoring system, but you mess with that as well with buffs and whatnot. Balatro will make you a worse poker player, and not even teach you the rules.
I don’t think it’s anti-gambling, it has nothing to do with gambling. It’s like saying solitaire and blackjack are similar because they both use playing cards…
Would love to see thr EFF branch out and take this on. Great opportunity to set precedence.
Why don’t people reach out to “Dirk Bosmans, Director General PEGI S.A.”?
PEGI isn’t a living creature. PEGI isn’t giving out biased ratings. It’s the people working there, and the person in charge. Actual people that actually exist here on this planet with us. “Talking” to a company is imaginary bullshit.
This post is clearly full of people WHO CLEARLY HAVE NO GAMBLING PROBLEM.
The arguments are even more ridiculous if you substitute an addictive drug for gambling.
“But vicodin and oxy are legal, how’s that fair!” “Plenty of kids are prescribed painkillers in other countries and they are fine!” “The regulatory agency is just trying to punish heroin for being way better than the rest!” “I think all drugs should be legal, anyone should be allowed to make whatever mistakes they want with no oversight!”
But this is like saying “ski ball is dangerous because it’s a gateway to beer pong. By the way we see no issues with kids playing vodka pong”
Its bad because children will associate poker with a good enjoyable time, which might lead them to a bad situation later on when they are permitted inside casinos.
I consider most arcades with ticket prizes to be gambling as well, and shouldnt be for kids. Most kids dont realize they could have just bought the prize for far cheaper.
And yes vodka pong is bad too, go yell at the rich vodka corporatists who paid the rating board to pass them though.
I’ll give you a tip, nearly all certification or rating boards are grifts.
By that logic Yahtzee teaches kids dice are fun and trains them to think craps is fun.
I wouldnt go that far, no.
This is sequence, a simple game where you place chips on the spaces that match the cards on your hand. The objective of the game is to complete 2 lines that are 5 chips long. Basically like connect 4. Do you think it should also be rated 18+?
I’d rather have kids get interested in playing poker than pulling a slot machine lever.
Id rather neither, I can’t think of a single good thing that would come of teaching a child poker.
We can all imagine the imagery of balatro being somewhat a problem.
But less of a problem compared to games with actual gambling for actual money in the form of lootboxes or gacha mechanisms?
If you can get that to make sense, i’d love to hear it. Can there be a serious warning regarding gambling on balatro? for sure. But how is gambling imagery 18+, and actual gambling with actual money 3+? That’s just insane.
What is most likely to get kids to become gambling addicts? Them learning pokerhands via balatro, or them gambling real money on lootboxes & gacha games and getting addicted to the thrill of winning after gamblling money?
No that part is very hypocritical, and I’m sure it has a lot to do with how much money the big game developers can throw around to make sure their loot box game isnt marked for adults.
I think both lootboxes and poker games are bad in this sense, its just the other reasons people are giving that are nonsense.
To say clearly, the rating board is hypocritical and should also mark lootbox games accordingly.
Have you ever played balatro?
Because calling it a pokergame makes me think you haven’t. It’s a deckbuilder that uses pokerhands (and impossible pokerhands) as mechanic to score, but there is no actual gambling, and except for which hands exist in poker and their relative value, you don’t learn any pokerskills. You also don’t do any gambling, you modify your deck of cards, and gather jokers that modify what cards are worth and how they score, and end up also making hands that are impossible in poker etc…
I can imagine the imagery and the link to poker to require some warning, but i’d find it hard to say it stimulates you to gamble, as it’s not a gambling game, doesn’t teach you the poker rules, and is a completely different kind of game. It just uses poker to flavor the gameplay, and uses some other poker terms (blinds, ante, chips) to indicate difficulty/score.
I dont disagree with what you brought up but you left out that the game literally looks similar to any general poker gambling site.
Its poker with a twist, which absolutely exists in casinos.
It does? I guess we’ll differ on that opinion i guess.
Unless showing you a hand of playingcards means you look like a general poker gambling site. It has a very specific artstyle, and since its gameplay is completely different from actual poker, so is how it behaves. For me it’s close to a slay the spire or heartstone kind of game, and looks like that…
I didnt mean specific if I said that, it generally looks like one. Like an old one from yahoo or something. The heavy poker themes and learning poker hands is enough.
I have seen people burn money in games just as much as some who has gambling problems. Just one has the person expectations being hoping if earning more to continue to gamble with, while gamers who spend cash are looking for more extrinsic values that are still just as useless or not worth it. I do say these game devs are more deserving of the cash but loot boxes exist and others forms of gambling that gets a blind eye. Balatro isn’t even real cash. It’s not the same.
I simply wouldnt give one game a pass to avoid hypocrisy. The loot box games should be marked for adults or changed.
I think there are dynamics at play her but to keep it short. I admire your steadfast disappointment towards gambling or playing with odds. However, for a game like balatro being completely free to continue playing after the initial purchase. As far as I can tell, there are no micro transactions or push for players to sink their wallets into the game. The entire game is basically a simulation. All randomizations are predetermined based on a seed. You can set it or you can figure it out if you are smart enough in math and cryptography. However, ratings are more annoyance than being a real guard against the real problems happening right now.
There are many more dissatisfying things. I doubt we should fight over the rating. Instead we should be in agreement that gambling and other pay to play odds like loot boxes is bad and stricter regulations.
Its not about real money spending. Loot boxes would be problematic without spending real money in my opinion. Thats why I think poker games that dont use any real money should also be marked for adults.
Unfortunately balatro uses poker as a base, and I dont think its changed it enough that it still doesnt resemble poker.
Im surprised the loot boxes in ea games are still around, did the rating organization comment on that at all?
at the end of the day, problems are at different views here. I find games are very similar in many aspects, such as relying heavily on RNG to make outcomes varied. If normal no cash poker is adult, then games like uno and other forms of RNG based games like rolling dice can just as much be adult from your reasoning. I am not particular to labeling games in this way.
there are many more nuances to labeling as adult oriented, such as ability to cause oneself to be worse off in life to the point that it is harmful (like losing your life savings or going into debt) or the content is sexual. that is what I would consider requirement for labeling as adult. I personally think anything that is tied with cash should be labeled as adult. yet, right now, this line is heavily blurred by microtransactions, lootboxes, cosmetics, in game currency and other ways to play with cash.
Playing with cash should be adult, but in game cash you cannot sell or buy is not something I think I can equate here because I see it as another incremental simulator kind of game, like many idle games are like now a days.
Rolling dice and uno have different goals, mainly they are competitive. Balatro and poker is a game where you chase ever higher something whether its points or money.
I agree anything cash should be adult since children dont work and have their own money to begin with. If they want to make a kids version then price in the IAPs and sell it as a whole package like we used to get as kids.
Its sort of funny, we are basically having the gateway drug argument here with games. Balatro could be a small step to other seriously predatory games. I can see how thats on the more strict side of the spectrum though, but I’m more pro regulation than anti.
I deleted my other comment because dogs jumped on me and somehow in the mix up, I pressed the post button, so I removed the partially malformed comment.
On the first topic, your reasoning to differentiate what the goals of competitive games and “chasing higher something” is just not well put into words here. From what I am reading, you tried to make them look different on the higher level view but failed to showcase that, which for both sides you claim one is competitive and the other side is not competitive. However, most definitions for being competitive is to chase ever higher “somethings” for which is mostly points but in other aspects can be money. Hence your reasoning has basically equated them even more deeply. So your point to make them different needs to be redone with that can make your point more clear and is reasonably opposites.
Moving on, I didn’t agree completely that playing with cash is strictly adult. More or less, anything that requires express consent, such as decisions that involve risk of self hurting activities (playing with cash is one of these activities because of our dependency on money), and other adult topics that are not relevant here. There are things that kids can buy to play games for or gain cosmetics for RP or whatever, however I understand the problem will be account selling shenanigans, but that at least raises the bar on barrier of entry too, and most not doing it. Kids need to learn to be less impulsive and I think that is more of what is the root of the problem in this case. We need regulations that would punish companies that try to exploit this.
Yeah, gateway drugs… Look, I know that actual hard to quit drugs are not close to the same as these psychological only addictive activities. Physical withdrawal from those drugs are miles more deadly and impactful on someone’s body and brain. I do think people can take some addictions too far but those cases are more likely to be popular in the news than the more tame stories that highlight what the majority will experience. I am still adamant that balatro is no where close to this topic. It is not able to transition you to something else and this is more on an individual basis and not really generalizable. If someone is being socially pressured by friends or others to do it then balatro will better prepare someone to not make bigger mistakes, so in reality it has a positive than a negative.
This is why I have a hard time reasoning with you on this. I will like to move on, so I will end it here. I feel like we have made our points and we will decide for our own. When it comes down to it, I will more than likely vote for any regulation to pass on restricting gambling and other forms of negative addictions, while weighing in any freedoms that may be reduced or affected. We will see, happy holidays.
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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.
If you search for “poker” on PEGI’s site, it seems that many games which are actually about simulated gambling are rated 12 or 16. They seem to think Balatro is more likely to expose children to realistic gambling than, say, Prominence Poker or Pure Hold’em World Poker Championship, which seems completely bizarre, given that those games are about playing poker and Balatro is a fancy kind of solitaire with no betting.
It’s clearly market manipulation.
The pathetic thing is games of the ilk of balatro and luck be a landlord (also OG peggle) are actually the kind of game that plays with your gambling impulses but in a healthy and fun way, these games should be celebrated for subverting the language of gambling to make something beautiful, how pathetic to have so little actual understanding of video games and yet have this kind of power to impact the industry.
I’ve always suspected I might be susceptible to gambling addiction so I stay out of casinos.
Instead, I go to the arcade. Which is like a low stakes child casino. Win a bunch of tickets and then either buy something stupid with them, or, just straight give them to some kid.
My point being, we’ve specifically constructed casino-like facilities for children and it’s regularly accepted, so why should Balatro be different?
There’s a scam to steal money from kids in pretty much every grocery store near where I live. We call them claw machines.
Gambling at an arcade is exactly the same. All you’ve done is lower the stakes so hopefully it couldn’t affect you.
Yeah how dare you pay $9.99 one time to gamble all you want! If you’re gonna get those dopamine hits, you better be spending real money at the tables!
First time I’ve seen someone mention Luck be a Landlord. Really fun game.
I want to see someone take an actual slot machine rip out all the evil bits and replace it with a computer running Luck Be A Landlord with custom flashing lights for when you win, the slot machine lever and all that stuff.
It would be pretty awesome
The thing you have to understand about PEGI is that they are mentally challenged.
Please don’t use folk’s medical condition as an insult.
Please stop pretending to be offended on other people’s behalf simply to draw attention to yourself
Y’all bots?
Wow, I rarely expect to find comments like this on Lemmy. Keep it up!
You’d have to shut me up and push me out.
You shouldn’t, you’ve already lost enough allies. It has become very clear that cripples and hall monitors does not a majority make. I don’t believe in your ethical maxims of sensitivity and strict language policing.
I’m sure you think the celebrated George Carlin is a massive cunt, in duller words.
Bro, they politely asked you not to use potentially hurtful language in an open forum.
Is that really how you react in the real world of someone says “I don’t like that, please stop?” Because that’s some abuser-coded behavior right there
coded
You’ll never successfully change the world like this. This kind of language demonstrably does nothing for you. We all know you believe “the common clay” should shut up and speak through filters approved by you and yours. Fuck you.
You ruined the culture of the left. You changed it from the side of union men to the side of flamboyant, sensitive baristas. To the point that you lost a lot of the vote even from unionized workers.
Lose everything in the next 4 years.
Dude you realize English is not a static language right? You’re making an ass out of yourself.
changed it from the side of union men to the side of flamboyant, sensitive baristas.
Lol based
I know.
Most people see it. Few, except the opposition, point to it as a negative.
Partly because they become the opposition by pointing to it. Anyone bothered by the change regardless of their standpoint of taxes, regulation, and public services are labeled right wing and pushed to admit it. They might as well go vote for the billionaires’ cause if they don’t want to shut up about their problems with sensitive liberals, right? Right. So it seems that’s exactly what they did.
People don’t like people who tell them to shut up, sit down, and behave.
People don’t like people who get so offended that they kick you out.That becomes a problem when you treat the majority like that, and not just a minority of very misbehaved assholes.
Guess why “The One Joke” became so prolific? Some creatively gay progressives desperately wanted to push the majority to comply with a set of new very strange expectations and taboos, and went about it in an incredibly obnoxious, reckless way. It became a huge meme because a majority, not an extremist minority, thought it was weird, ridiculous, stupid, overconfident, pathetic, and probably a whole host of other things.
Mate, they made a joke. Kinda like the ones the celebrated George Carlin made.
That was not a joke. That was a serious request.
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.
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 keep pulling the hermit card out of my tarot deck, but it hasn’t doubled my money! Have I learned incorrectly??
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
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 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
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
“I’m sorry, the Llanowar Elves are banned, you should keep up with the meta” Activates the Pot of Greed and draw two.
“This is worth eighteen bazillion chips. Here is five dollars.”
“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…
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.
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
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.
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
Yup that checks out. Say hi to Betty White for me!
have some passerby take the picutres, you dummdumm
Ok, I’ll believe you this time…
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.
Basically all media ratings bodies are weirdly corrupt and apply ratings without any clear rhyme or reason. There’s good reason to largely ignore the ratings as an adult and even as a parent
My kids saw me playing it yesterday and asked if they could try. I said, “sure, why not?” They asked if they could play Fortnite and I told them there’s no way that’s happening in my house.
If your kid wants to play a thing, at least check out a gameplay video and read a bit instead of blindly saying yes or no.
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 - !
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
As someone who never planned on playing Balatro, and was kind of getting tired of seeing it on my feed the way I got tired of helldivers 2 stuff right after release.
I would happily toss a tenner to the dev for a lawyer over this.
It’s a really good game. As a mobile game, it’s honestly up there with Stardew Valley. They are the only two mobile games I know of that check all the boxes. They are actually good games, there are no ads or micro transactions, and they’re infinitely playable.
Slay the spire, slice and dice, dicey dungeons are also up there as mobile games.
I was just about to mention Slice and Dice. The new patch had been great for balance!
I would probably never play on PC. Was considering getting the mobile port but my phone doesn’t support it apparently…
I want to just add my list of digital boardgames here lol excellent, real games. no ad farms, no crap.
Pay a couple dollars and download a rules PDF for the boardgame and away you go. Some of these are big games that it would be worth playing on PC or watching videos about first.
I own:
- Star realms
- Mystic vale
- Dominion
- Terraforming Mars
- Wingspan
- 7 wonders duel
- Cartographers
- Ticket to ride
- Catan
Good game but Haven’t played digitally; on wishlist:
- Dune imperium
- Scythe
- Istanbul
- Castles of Burgundy
- 1 deck dungeon
- Roll for the galaxy
- Concordia
- Charterstone
- Stone age
- Railroad ink
- Lords of water deep
- Maricaibo
Don’t buy it. It’s too addictive
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.
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.
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.
Let’s go to Venture!
Okay then, how does Hungry Jacks fit into that chain of logic?
Well, the burgers are better at hungry jacks!
Burger King just hasn’t died yet.
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
