PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery

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.

did you just compare solitaire to gambling?

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.

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.

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.

I think the current microsoft version of solitaire has microtransactions and ads so is actually significantly worse

Give the kids Linux! Build a generation of superusers!

Because you don't place bets on your solitaire hand.

Violence and gore? 13+. Some boobs? Adults only.

Killing good, love bad.

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.

"sure our game has gambling elements, but we're Nintendo so shut the fuck up and give us a better rating because you're a private company in the business of giving ratings"

I believe 51 Games came out right before the stricter PEGI policy. Same year at least. The whole thing is very silly.

Thank God it's ten dollars.

I almost downloaded it.

Gotta love how they saved the literal slot machine for a minute in to the video so it wouldn't be too obvious.

Just right up front with the card pack gambling mechanic.

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.

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.

Twitter can reach various community from variety of region, like English Asia Twitter.

Entire fediverse is still mostly Western community.

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 haven't seen Loot Boxes in a game in awhile, I kinda prefer those to FOMO...

I think the perfect system is you earn Loot Boxes by playing that can contain anything, but you can buy the specific things you want at any time, the boxes themselves are unlocked through gameplay.

Heroes of the Storm did this, and god I miss that game.

I wish DBD did it

Sounds about right. I'd seen "slot machines" (we call em poker machines or "the pokies") more times than I can remember before I was 18.

The ESRB isn’t awful, it’s not perfect of course, but I think it’s pretty dang good for what it is.

Critiquing Doge on steam

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.

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.

It’s a good question

It has rouge features of building up a lot of utility in each run

Personally, I don’t care if balatro is popular here, the pegi 18 rating will impact sales 0%.

I don't doubt that some weird ultra religious family will ban Balatro in their house because of that.

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.

Yahtzee uses "valid poker hands" and dice for scoring too. They sell that in toy stores.

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?

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.

It's literally not.

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.