GOTY candidate Balatro is a game millions completely love. Its bizarre mix of wacky Poker-esque gameplay and unique style and humor has captivated players around the globe. It also features zero microtransactions, instead adding additional cards and collaborations for free. But that doesn’t mean the PEGI rating system feels great about virtual poker. Recently slapping Balatro with a PEGI 18+ rating due to “simulated gambling,” LocalThunk has some thoughts.
Buy These Loot Boxes, but Don’t Play the Card Game if You’re Too Young
Anyone who has played Balatro knows it’s nothing like real Poker, but that isn’t stopping the PEGI rating board from showing their true hand. Games like EA Sports FC 25 offer plenty of opportunities for players of any age to gamble on loot boxes and other randomized items, yet it has only received a 3+ rating.
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According to the PEGI Ratings Board, Balatro deserves an 18+ Rating because of the following:
“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.”
Taking to X (formerly known as Twitter), Balatro developer @LocalThunk had some thoughts about this rating. Jokingly, LocalThunk tweeted out:
“Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions/loot boxes/real gambling to lower that rating to 3+ like EA sports FC”
If you’re looking to see for yourself, you can find the PEGI ratings for EA Sports FC 25, as well as Balatro (here), to compare notes between the two.
In What World Is ‘Balatro’ on the Same Page as Something Like ‘Black Ops 6’?
While Balatro may have some real-life Poker hands, there is no way that it deserves an 18+ rating. Sure, it can ruin your free time by sucking it all away faster than you could have imagined. But just because the game features Poker hands doesn’t mean it should be rated this way.
Other countries, such as Australia, have rated games like EA Sports FC 25 as M for their in-game purchases. Seeing as these can be rather predatory, it’s understandable that they would want to make players aware of the possible dangers. But Balatro doesn’t feature real gambling by any means. It’s more of a high-score roguelike than an actual Poker game.
It feels like a major oversight by the ratings board. Much like NBC News calling Among Us an “assassin game” during the recent controversy involving the United Healthcare CEO, this rating feels like a complete misunderstanding of the subject matter. Yes, the United Healthcare situation is much more dire than Balatro getting an 18+ rating. But it also shows that the rating companies seemingly care more about the simulated act of “gambling” than real-world examples.
Games like NBA 2K25 continue to get more egregious with their microtransactions year after year. But it’s still rated E for Everyone, even though players can spend hundreds of dollars without care. This real-life gambling should undergo scrutiny much more than simulated goofy gambling — in my eyes, at least.
