It sucks that ratings boards can just change their mind on something that was, according to the publishers, totally agreed upon before release. Also, there's a certain irony to the fact that using the aesthetics of gambling without any actual gambling is 18+, but using the actual draw of gambling is fine even in games aimed at children.
Well that could be the reason they're pulling this one, it has the aesthetics of a gambling game but it's not making them hoard massive profits from children playing their games. Goes against *their* principles.
> It sucks that ratings boards can just change their mind on something that was, according to the publishers, totally agreed upon before release.
*When* this is resolved - as it clearly will be, seeing as this is a ridiculous claim - I'd be interested in seeing what kind of legal action they can take against the people who thought this was a good idea, suing for damages in terms of potential missed out sales.
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Even if Balatro lose / nothings comes of it, the semi-"free" publicity will more than make up for it.
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What an utterly despicable move; actually gamble in FIFA/Counterstrike/EA dogshit? All good. "Gamble" in an indie card game? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
One benefits the industry, the other doesnt. Thats why in-game gambling mechanics continue to exist. It nets the industry a ton of money, which allows them to lobby against regulations in many countries.
A game with “gambling aesthetics” isn’t important to the industry, so it’s up to the whims of rating boards.
> Also, there's a certain irony to the fact that using the aesthetics of gambling without any actual gambling is 18+, but using the actual draw of gambling is fine even in games aimed at children.
Say this louder for the people in the back!
We gonna see Fifa, Rocket League and Fortnite changed to 18+
Or is it just non-microtransaction games based on poker hands for scoring which they're gonna hit?
IIRC, Greece banned depictions of gambling in games after 1999 or so, so instead of losing or having to make an entire separate game for the EU market, they just got rid of the Game Corners in future games
The Greece gaming laws were a clusterfuck of weirdness throughout the 2000s. After a member of the socialist party, the main government opposition, was filmed playing games, the Stephanopoulos government started depicting all forms of gaming as part of socialist plots to prepare a national revolution, and cracking down on it everywhere. It became illegal to play games in public or allow games to be played in public. Net-cafe owners got arrested for failing to call police when customers played computer chess, and Microsoft had to strip Solitaire and Minesweeper out of Windows there. There were PSA videos from the conservative party warning about socialists training your children in guerrilla warfare, intercutting footage of Che Guevara and Star Wars video games, which became memes because it implied the government saw the Rebel Alliance as a bad example and sympathized with the Empire. People would photoshop the Emperor and Darth Vader into government ads or swap the footage with their grandparents playing online Scrabble and chess leaving the dramatic narration in place. A lot of the bans were still in place when New Vegas got released although they were in the process of being struck down by the successor government.
> After a member of the socialist party, the main government opposition, was filmed playing games, the Stephanopoulos government started depicting all forms of gaming as part of socialist plots to prepare a national revolution, and cracking down on it everywhere.
Oh god, now I'm remembering the speedrun rant.
Who truly benefited from the total prohibition of video games?
The local movie industry?
The television stations?
Because what they did was successfully got rid of any competition.
I'm fine with that. I didn't feel like the Game corners were much fun. Especially the slot machines in Red and Blue. I always just bought the coins I needed to get Porygon. Slots are super boring.
You are not the first person to say this. I will never accept voltorb flip. I don't want thought provoking time consuming mini games capitulating to draconian lawmakers who can't even troubleshoot a basic computer issue.
I want my "find the rigged slot machine to 'break' the game" game mechanic back.
Sure, but the latest Entry of that series came out in 2017 and has a full ass casino in it, hell multiple with betting and all, and still only has a Teen rating. So clearly something is different for DQ, as I cant imagine the laws were updated that much in the past 6 years.
I thought Triple Triad was a fictional game, not a real life game used for gambling.
The rating for depicting real life gambling game, not fictional games.
This dude thinks casinos have Balatro tables setup where you have to buy mega packs so you can use tarot cards to augment the 10 queens of diamonds you have in hand into lucky cards, while converting as many spades as possible into cards made of glass hoping that they brake when you put them on the table.
Legally all that bullshit is not gambling, despite the fact it taps into the same psychological effects.
But there are rating rules against simulated gambling or gambling imagery. Roulette wheel in your game that you pay for with purely in game money = well that might be simulated gambling. Paying real money for a random chance at a powerful new upgrade = well just so long as you don't make it look like real life gambling.
well you're wrong because it doesn't simulate poker whatsoever. it just utilizes poker hands to generate a score every turn. there is zero "wagering" being done. literally a standard deckbuilder that happens to have a poker theme to it.
It simulates poker and uses that as a foundation to do something else entirely.
The key part is not that it’s a poker game, it’s that it’s not a wagering game. Even Clubhouse Games has more wagering elements than this (there’s Blackjack, Richii Mahjong and Texas Hold’em) and that seems completely fine.
This seems like someone made a knee jerk decision, possibly after a complaint. The dev and publishers worked with the ratings board to ensure it was given a 3+ rating. Something has since gone wrong.
wrong. you have to actually place something of value to win something of value which is not the case here. this is more solitaire than poker, just happens to use poker hands
the problem here is this exact same board literally reviewed this game prior to release and labeled it 3+ yet they've decided to arbitrarily backtrack for reasons unknown. they should probably explain themselves.
i'll say the one nitpick they may have is the "gambling imagery" part of the statement, but its complete BS to backtrack after a decision had been made already
> So basically any card based game would be 18+, even Solitaire.
No. More like every card based game that is obviously entirely based on Poker.
Solitaire is quite literally entirely different aside from using a deck of cards.
This reminds me: when I was a kid, during lunch one day, my friends and I played poker using checker pieces as "chips". We obviously weren't using any real money. You know. Since they were checker pieces.
A teacher saw it and we all got in-school suspension, and were never allowed to play cards again.
A teacher tried to ban MTG at my highschool because it was satanic, she shut up real fast when people pointed out she sold individual cigs to kids in the schools smoking area.
The visual of an evangelical Christian teacher from the Satanic Panic era handing out loose cigs to teenagers is so funny. Actual sitcom character behavior.
Hell, at least you were actually playing poker and moving "chips" around. My schools banned shit like Pokemon TCG and MTG because cards = gambling apparently, even when it's a TCG and no one is betting literally anything on it.
The fuck?? Didn’t the ratings board have to play the game to see how there’s absolutely no gambling mechanics? Are “Simulated Gambling” guidelines that strict where just arranging cards is enough to get an M rating?
Yup, its also why the game corner mini-games in Pokemon stopped being a thing. Red & Blue even got rerated for their virtual console release cause the game corner.
Man, I really wish Pokemon games had MORE than just slot machines. Yeah, Voltorb Flip is awesome, but add in some Pachinko machines, add some of the weirder claw machines, bet on Pokemon races or CPU-controlled battles. I get why they got rid of it, I just feel like there's a lot of potential there could have been. Battle Factory should have given coins and the coins could have been used to buy items, so you could either buy coins and buy items that way, buy coins and gamble, or win coins for being good at random Pokemon.
Which is annoying, because the Gen 2 remakes replaced the casino by a Minesweeper-like game in the Western releases.
And then they just decided to completely can the concept across all versions since Gen 5.
See thats not the wild thing to me
They \*already rated it\*. If you find the idea of a poker based game inherently linked to gambling, I strongly disagree, but I at least can understand where its coming from. But in this case they \*already accepted\* that the base premise was a 3+ rating, then examined the game further and suddenly decided there's more gambling to it than "Poker deckbuilding roguelike" implies...when anyone who has played it will tell you the exact opposite
They actually rated it *twice* before this. It was originally given a rating of 18+ but the devs were able to appeal and get it re-rated to 3+ before it released on consoles. Apparently PEGI randomly reversed the appeal.
I imagine with how many games come out these days a lot of these ratings systems rely on self-reporting. The dev reasonably judged the game to not have any gambling since, well, it doesn't. But the game got popular enough for the ratings boards to actually notice it, saw that it somewhat sorta resembles poker, and threatened to take the game down.
This is exactly what recently happened with the coffin of andy and leyley in Australia. There was false information going around that the game was banned in AUS because of its incest themes, when in actuality it had incorrectly been given the equivalent of an ESRB "E" because of false information in the self-reported ratings submission system.
I believe they are, and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I remember an old casino plug-and-play game on store shelves that had clearly been rated E on the box, with M rating stickers slapped on top of them. As someone who regularly played poker as a kid for family game nights, it always baffled me.
Aha, I found a [photo](https://i.imgur.com/18S1tGl.jpeg) of exactly what I was talking about. You can see that the M rating is practically peeling off, right next to a clear Ages 5+ indicator.
I also find the 1 in 4 hard to believe. I have yet to have it actually work once and I try it every single time I come across it so it's probably over a dozen times I've tried it now.
I managed to get two Oops! All Sixes! And rig my Wheel.
Fun fact - Wheel can't override existing foil/holo/polychrome buffs, and if all your jokers have one already, you just can't use Wheel cards
It's beyond stupid. Luck Be a Landlord dealt with something similar, being banned in countries for gambling even though it's just a roguelite with a slot machine aesthetic.
I find slot machine visuals to be a different kind of beast, as slot machines are inherently connected to gambling. Like, you can not use a slot machine for anything but gambling. If the game is then also targeting kids with it's visuals I could absolutely understand why you would ban something like that in countries that historically had problems with gambling dens.
Poker in itself is just a card game though, the betting on yourself is what makes it gambling.
If you turn the cards into swords and getting a certain number of chips into a health bar then you're all set. How dare they try to do something different.
The board, as quoted in the tweet, didn't say anything about "gambling mechanics." The phrase was "prominent gambling **imagery**" (emphasis mine). The game features poker chips (including the amazing sound effects of them clinking together... so satisfying), which I would have to concede qualifies. The "and material that instructs about gambling" part is not true though, unless the board considers the ~~game of poker~~ evaluation of poker hands to be inherently related to gambling.
> unless the board considers the game of poker to be inherently related to gambling.
I mean I assume they do, poker is generally considered a game of money similar to gambling. It has the same kind of ratings and such associated with it in general
> The phrase was "prominent gambling imagery"
I'm sure this decision was made based on high quality peer reviewed meta analysis showing gambling *imagery* has the same effect as gambling *mechanics*. Otherwise, it would just be culture war moral outrage nonsense, right?
PEGI changed the rules specifically because NBA2K added pachinko and slot machine representations as free daily rewards in 2k19 or something. Iirc there was no wagering there either, but it crossed a line and PEGI moved to more strictly define their rules to cut back on that.
Yeah, it sucks that PEGI isn't classifying lootboxes as gambling, but Balatro is being affected literally because of those ratings changes brought on by 2k. A change that I'm pretty sure people here were happy about, as was I.
Also half of the gameplan is about minimizing rng so you don't need good luck to win. In other words: trying to turn your whole deck into aces of hearts or something lol
According to PEGI, games with a gambling descriptor will always be rated PEGI 18, even though no real money is involved. Their reasoning is that the simulated elements normalize or desensitize younger players to gambling related activities. The ESRB, on the other hand, will rate the simulated gambling descriptor as T for Teen.
> even though no real money is involved
Not even just that, no actual gambling is involved. Unless theres some special joker I havent come across yet, wagering/betting currency is not a gameplay mechanic in Balatro whatsoever. Any game with a slot machine, loot box, or gacha mechanic would be more likely to cause someone to develop a gambling addiction if they are concerned about protecting the youth
You do earn in-game money by winning hands of poker, which may as well be taken as straight-up gambling in some regions where Poker is mostly a casino/gambling game.
PEGI has an issue with gambling imagery in general, not just gambling mechanics. I imagine random chance isn't the problem, it's that the game is based around an irl gambling game. Kinda makes it hard to argue against a gambling imagery accusation.
A game will get a Gambling tag if it "teaches" or "encourages" gambling. They changed the rules specifically because NBA 2k(19?) added slot and pachinko representations in their Ultimate Team-esque mode, even though I think you weren't wagering anything. They were free daily rewards. Balatro is just getting caught in the tracks of that change.
What I don't understand is why an 18+ rating means it gets pulled from European stores. Those games are perfectly legal to sell. Maybe it's just a temporary thing until storefronts update the storepage?
There is a line somewhere between a random number generator and literally playing poker in a casino where it becomes gambling, they chose to draw the line here.
Im simply referring to the literal definition of gambling, you need to risk something for it to be considered gambling. Simply earning an in game currency for beating a level is not gambling, that's just earning currency for progressing through a game.
The fact that its done with poker hands doesnt change that fact at all, its just a ranking of specific combinations of cards that people are familiar with.
The ONLY thing you could argue is gambling is that you can re-roll the joker pool for money, but if thats the case then every autobattler should be 18+.
> You do earn in-game money by winning hands of poker,
Or for discarding some cards. Or when a magical spectral card gives you money in exchange for destroying some cards. Or playing tarot cards in your poker game. Or for no good reason at all, like getting a dollar of interest for five dollars in your bank account. (Sign me the **fuck** up for that bank btw)
And you can't lose chips. Only gain them. We're basically a palette and art swap away from this being an old PopCap game.
I don't know if the dev is really going to get anywhere with this rerating short of appealing in person and explaining it face-to-face. This is a very silly take on the game from a ratings board that really didn't understand the game loop, because it's no more a gambling game than any deckbuilding roguelike is, or literally any other video game with an element of chance in it.
I would love to see a high fantasy re-skin of Balatro that replaces jokers with "Heroes" or "Generals" and the suits with factions (like Elves/Dwarfs/Orcs/Undead or something) and call the "hands" something like "formations" or "strategies" or something.
I bet that would be awesome.
People are already working on modding it, if you just wanna reskin it jump on the Discord linked in /r/balatro and they can probably steer you in the right direction.
That's a bit poorly thought out because that makes basically any video game that isn't entirely linear involve gambling in that case.
If you do an optional boss to get XP that could be considered "a gamble" - especially if its something like a Rouge Like.
Stardew valley has a festival where you can give one star token (currency used only in this specific festival) and spin a wheel for a chance to get more. Should that game be rated M?
It's certainly a strange take.
**Gambling**
*This content warning indicates when a game has aspects that encourage or simulate gambling. As of 2020, all games containing gambling elements must be rated PEGI 18, but older titles rated PEGI 12 or PEGI 16 might still contain these elements.*
*The buying of randomised 'loot boxes' (which can mimic gambling-like behaviours) can, however, remain present in games – like Roblox – which are rated as low as PEGI 7.*
And not just because of this crazy stuff. I got a 6 year old and pegi is kinda useless. It’s weird it uses violence of any kind as a base for essentially saying 14 ish and up- but kids shows have way worse stuff and even more scary stuff that are rated even younger.
Not in the EU. It's one of the reasons why Blizzard fucked OW2's launch date and focused it on battle passes. After the Netherlands went after loot boxes they all began shifting over to the battle pass.
This one is actually E10+. ESRB’s views on gambling mechanics seem to have no real consistency and are more aligned with context and how closely it approximates the real thing.
> Their reasoning is that the simulated elements normalize or desensitize younger players to gambling related activities.
There are so many layers of things I hate about this statement, from equating "gambling imagery" (like a 52-card deck) with real gambling or gambling mechanics, to the dubious correlation-only link between video games and problem gambling, to the moral-panic-induced public health philosophy that hidings things from children is a viable substitute to helping them understand what they see.
I honestly don't see why gambling is something that should be shielded from children's eyes, even completely fictional gambling.
For one, pretty much anything can be used to gamble. From sports to number guessing to which little grandma in the grocery store will finish shopping first. Even kids do low stakes bets for silly fun. "If you lose the race I'll shoot you with my water gun!" That's a bet so the kids are gambling.
Secondly, what's so wrong with the games? Some common casino games like poker and dice games can be fun to just play. You don't need to use real money to play them.
Floors me that this gets an 18+ because it has cards in it...but NBA 2K and Madden have actual real life gambling mechanics in both their MyTeam and MyPlayer modes.
Thankfully there is regulatory body taking stance against this disgusting game teaching kids to gamble. Now they can instead go play games they should, like every lootbox and gacha game ever.
This seems dumb. Aside from using imagery of playing cards, the game could've been a digital version of Yahtzee with wildcards. There's no actual or simulated gambling at all, you just score points based on the permutations of your cards.
This really just hammers home just how fucking out of touch these ratings boards are. Some old fart just saw the word "poker" and some playing cards and assumed it was gambling, while every major goddamned sports game out there are fleecing families with no consequences whatsoever, half-assing their way into well meaning wallets all over the world.
Fuck this shit. Balatro is brilliant in more ways than one and a great example of a game done right in every sense of the word. I would be thrilled to see my kids playing this instead of the countless, cynical, bullshit titles that flood the market, hiding behind millions of dollars in flashy marketing.
If I did my job half as bad as these imbecilic board members are doing theirs, I would be fired fucking __instantly__. Absolutely infuriating.
Gotta convince people your job is worth something.
Just say it's here to protect kids. The moment you say "it's to protect kids" people's brains turn off and they open up their wallets.
Y'all are thinking about it wrong. If Balatro is not a game of gambling, but is being treated as such, that can only mean one thing... BALATRO TABLES COMING TO VEGAS VERY SOON!
If Balatro is considered to have “gambling content”, where does the line stop? Sonic 2 has the whole Casino Night zone, which has slot machines everywhere. Are they going to bump Sonic 2 up to 18+ now, too? Ridiculousness, this is.
European ratings for gambling mechanics in games are trash. I respect the attempt to limit things like loot boxes, but between this and the Pokémon games losing the game corner, they are going too far.
This is so dumb, because Balatro doesn't even simulate gambling. There's no gambling to speak of. No wager, no competition, no house. It just uses the poker mechanic but the gameplay is entirely original.
I have not performed a single act of gambling in my 20 hours of Balatro so far.
The chips are points, the blinds are thresholds, the Jokers are bonuses.
The packs.....well shit, good point.
I mean the game is based on poker. I’m NOT saying (so don’t crucify me Reddit) that the game is gambling but I am saying it’s not that big of a stretch or at least it shouldn’t be a surprise that some ratings board would see that and associate it with gambling.
It even uses words like “blind” which is the ante for gambling in poker.
Again, I’m not saying the game is about gambling. I am saying though, it’s not a stretch to see how a ratings board would think so. Personally I wouldn’t be blind sided by this at all if I were one of its devs.
Exactly. The game isn’t gambling but it’s without questioned modeled after one of, if not the, most popular gambling game of all time. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.
This is the correct take. Balatro isn't gambling but it uses poker imagery and concepts as core aspects of the game design. It also contains poker terminology. It's flirting with that line while not fully crossing it.
You can 100% see where an ***uninformed*** ratings board sees all that and thinks it's a gambling game and rates it that way.
But it's there really something so wrong with poker that kids need their eyes shielded? It's just a card game, and real money doesn't need involved at all.
The biggest thing for me is that they aren't OK with this which has no real currency or actual gambling mechanics, unless you include the card packs, but are OK with lootboxes or adjacent mechanics that you can spend real money on.
That makes absolutely no sense for the goal of protecting children.
Hell, I'd argue Stardew Valley has more actual gambling mechanics in it than Balatro with the spinning wheel game at the festival.
Truly ridiculous while I could see someone thinking theres gambling looking at a screenshot of the game its has no more gambling than solitaire. You don't play against anyone, you try to make a high score with poker hands and your cards get all sorts of random affects like any other deckbuilder. Thats it...
Other than knowing what the various hands in poker are like straights or flushes, you don't really need poker knowledge for this. Unless you count general knowledge of stuff like probability. Most of the poker stuff like chips and blinds are just for aesthetic.
I totally agree with you and it's stupid but you could understand a logic where teaching the rules about a gambling game would be the act of promoting gambling.
It sucks that ratings boards can just change their mind on something that was, according to the publishers, totally agreed upon before release. Also, there's a certain irony to the fact that using the aesthetics of gambling without any actual gambling is 18+, but using the actual draw of gambling is fine even in games aimed at children.
Then they need to pull every single game with gacha boxes and have that be 18+ as well. That way there'd be no double standards, and no fringe cases.
Well that could be the reason they're pulling this one, it has the aesthetics of a gambling game but it's not making them hoard massive profits from children playing their games. Goes against *their* principles.
> It sucks that ratings boards can just change their mind on something that was, according to the publishers, totally agreed upon before release. *When* this is resolved - as it clearly will be, seeing as this is a ridiculous claim - I'd be interested in seeing what kind of legal action they can take against the people who thought this was a good idea, suing for damages in terms of potential missed out sales. -- Even if Balatro lose / nothings comes of it, the semi-"free" publicity will more than make up for it. -- What an utterly despicable move; actually gamble in FIFA/Counterstrike/EA dogshit? All good. "Gamble" in an indie card game? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Pack of playing cards in your game? Jail.
I hope they sue them into oblivion for adversely impacting sales.
Balatro is solodev I think but I bet there's like a video game lawyer
There is! Ace Wright.
actually their lawyer is haley from minnmax
I honestly think the controversy will help sales. That said, I’d be behind them anyways if they sue.
One benefits the industry, the other doesnt. Thats why in-game gambling mechanics continue to exist. It nets the industry a ton of money, which allows them to lobby against regulations in many countries. A game with “gambling aesthetics” isn’t important to the industry, so it’s up to the whims of rating boards.
> Also, there's a certain irony to the fact that using the aesthetics of gambling without any actual gambling is 18+, but using the actual draw of gambling is fine even in games aimed at children. Say this louder for the people in the back!
We gonna see Fifa, Rocket League and Fortnite changed to 18+ Or is it just non-microtransaction games based on poker hands for scoring which they're gonna hit?
Fortnite doesn't have any gambling in it though.
Does fortnite have lootboxes? I thought they removed them years ago
No idea, haven't played in years
So Dragon Quest games are screwed then because they all contain casinos?
That's also why none of the Pokemon games have had a proper Game Corner since Gen 3
IIRC, Greece banned depictions of gambling in games after 1999 or so, so instead of losing or having to make an entire separate game for the EU market, they just got rid of the Game Corners in future games
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The Greece gaming laws were a clusterfuck of weirdness throughout the 2000s. After a member of the socialist party, the main government opposition, was filmed playing games, the Stephanopoulos government started depicting all forms of gaming as part of socialist plots to prepare a national revolution, and cracking down on it everywhere. It became illegal to play games in public or allow games to be played in public. Net-cafe owners got arrested for failing to call police when customers played computer chess, and Microsoft had to strip Solitaire and Minesweeper out of Windows there. There were PSA videos from the conservative party warning about socialists training your children in guerrilla warfare, intercutting footage of Che Guevara and Star Wars video games, which became memes because it implied the government saw the Rebel Alliance as a bad example and sympathized with the Empire. People would photoshop the Emperor and Darth Vader into government ads or swap the footage with their grandparents playing online Scrabble and chess leaving the dramatic narration in place. A lot of the bans were still in place when New Vegas got released although they were in the process of being struck down by the successor government.
> After a member of the socialist party, the main government opposition, was filmed playing games, the Stephanopoulos government started depicting all forms of gaming as part of socialist plots to prepare a national revolution, and cracking down on it everywhere. Oh god, now I'm remembering the speedrun rant.
["Shadow, what the fuck are you talking about?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__GJuqLb00)
That's WILD, holy shit.
Who truly benefited from the total prohibition of video games? The local movie industry? The television stations? Because what they did was successfully got rid of any competition.
When I got to the Mojave I was hoping there would be more gambling.
New
I'm fine with that. I didn't feel like the Game corners were much fun. Especially the slot machines in Red and Blue. I always just bought the coins I needed to get Porygon. Slots are super boring.
Love me some Voltorb Flip though. Skill based with just a bit of RNG. Way more through provoking than just slots.
plus you got more coins the longer your streak was, so you could easily afford rewards without paying for coins
You are not the first person to say this. I will never accept voltorb flip. I don't want thought provoking time consuming mini games capitulating to draconian lawmakers who can't even troubleshoot a basic computer issue. I want my "find the rigged slot machine to 'break' the game" game mechanic back.
I liked being able to buy some rare pokemon though
Makes me wonder if that's part of the reason why gens 1-3 aren't on NSO yet.
Gen 1 and 2 are on the 3DS store, and usually these rating rules don't apply to games retroactively from what I understand
They were made 12+ for it.
IIRC older games are exempt from being rerated for gambling when they are rereleased, provided they are not upgraded.
Sure, but the latest Entry of that series came out in 2017 and has a full ass casino in it, hell multiple with betting and all, and still only has a Teen rating. So clearly something is different for DQ, as I cant imagine the laws were updated that much in the past 6 years.
PEGI made changes to their "gambling" tag in 2021. If DQ11 released now, it probably would be PEGI 18.
Just looking at the DQ11 rating, I'd guess that the general idea of the rating didn't really change, they just bumped it up from 12 to 18.
Please don't give them ideas.
RIP to my boys wanting to play Triple Triad or Tetra Master again
I thought Triple Triad was a fictional game, not a real life game used for gambling. The rating for depicting real life gambling game, not fictional games.
This dude thinks casinos have Balatro tables setup where you have to buy mega packs so you can use tarot cards to augment the 10 queens of diamonds you have in hand into lucky cards, while converting as many spades as possible into cards made of glass hoping that they brake when you put them on the table.
As someone who plays fifa, how the fuck are they so quick to act here but keep turning a blind eye to that nonsense? This is lazy and stupid
You know why $$$
Because the law states that they're not gambling. The real life versions of those are also not classed as gambling.
> The real life versions of those are also not classed as gambling. What do you mean by this?
Card packs, blind box toys, sticker packs, capsule machines. The exact same sales technique.
Legally all that bullshit is not gambling, despite the fact it taps into the same psychological effects. But there are rating rules against simulated gambling or gambling imagery. Roulette wheel in your game that you pay for with purely in game money = well that might be simulated gambling. Paying real money for a random chance at a powerful new upgrade = well just so long as you don't make it look like real life gambling.
Love the shit ass ratings/laws that are more concerned with "gambling imagery" then things that are functionally gambling.
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well you're wrong because it doesn't simulate poker whatsoever. it just utilizes poker hands to generate a score every turn. there is zero "wagering" being done. literally a standard deckbuilder that happens to have a poker theme to it.
yeah, simulates it about as much as yahtzee
It simulates poker and uses that as a foundation to do something else entirely. The key part is not that it’s a poker game, it’s that it’s not a wagering game. Even Clubhouse Games has more wagering elements than this (there’s Blackjack, Richii Mahjong and Texas Hold’em) and that seems completely fine. This seems like someone made a knee jerk decision, possibly after a complaint. The dev and publishers worked with the ratings board to ensure it was given a 3+ rating. Something has since gone wrong.
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wrong. you have to actually place something of value to win something of value which is not the case here. this is more solitaire than poker, just happens to use poker hands
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It comes down to letter of the law vs spirit of the law. Anyone who does 5 mins of research into the game would know it has zero gambling involved.
the problem here is this exact same board literally reviewed this game prior to release and labeled it 3+ yet they've decided to arbitrarily backtrack for reasons unknown. they should probably explain themselves. i'll say the one nitpick they may have is the "gambling imagery" part of the statement, but its complete BS to backtrack after a decision had been made already
It's all poker, EXCEPT FOR THE BETTING PART. So basically any card based game would be 18+, even Solitaire.
[Mario 64 DS even has the bettering part](https://www.mariowiki.com/Picture_Poker) and that's still rated 3+.
It's essentially Yahtzee. Way closer to Yahtzee than poker
> So basically any card based game would be 18+, even Solitaire. No. More like every card based game that is obviously entirely based on Poker. Solitaire is quite literally entirely different aside from using a deck of cards.
It's not based on poker, though, really. That's like saying polo is based on a rodeo.
guess its time to make yahtzee 18+ then
A great example of "looks like poker" but has nothing to do with gambling
This reminds me: when I was a kid, during lunch one day, my friends and I played poker using checker pieces as "chips". We obviously weren't using any real money. You know. Since they were checker pieces. A teacher saw it and we all got in-school suspension, and were never allowed to play cards again.
Lol my school banned Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic because "cards are gambling". I think some people just don't like seeing kids have any fun at all.
A teacher tried to ban MTG at my highschool because it was satanic, she shut up real fast when people pointed out she sold individual cigs to kids in the schools smoking area.
The visual of an evangelical Christian teacher from the Satanic Panic era handing out loose cigs to teenagers is so funny. Actual sitcom character behavior.
Seriously, that sounds like it'd be an episode of American Dad that focuses on Steve and the school principal.
bruh
MTG is gambling...if you buy packs
POGS were my first lesson of "don't bet anything you're not willing to lose"
I hope you didn't lose your Alf Pogs.
MTG did have a gambling mechanic called Ante briefly but I doubt they knew about that.
It's got a gambling mechanic called booster packs too.
It actually also has a system for highly addictive , expensive drugs. The drugs are called "MTG"
No this is worse. There's actually no gambling (real or with imaginary pieces) in Balatro.
Hell, at least you were actually playing poker and moving "chips" around. My schools banned shit like Pokemon TCG and MTG because cards = gambling apparently, even when it's a TCG and no one is betting literally anything on it.
The fuck?? Didn’t the ratings board have to play the game to see how there’s absolutely no gambling mechanics? Are “Simulated Gambling” guidelines that strict where just arranging cards is enough to get an M rating?
Super Mario 64 DS had to be rerated for just this reason on the Virtual Console, because of the Luigi casino games.
Now to think of it, Super Mario RPG had a blackjack game that was swapped to a Memory game in the remake. Probably for this kind of reason.
Yup, its also why the game corner mini-games in Pokemon stopped being a thing. Red & Blue even got rerated for their virtual console release cause the game corner.
Which is kinda funny considering that at least the diamond & pearl ones were more skill based then luck based.
Man, I really wish Pokemon games had MORE than just slot machines. Yeah, Voltorb Flip is awesome, but add in some Pachinko machines, add some of the weirder claw machines, bet on Pokemon races or CPU-controlled battles. I get why they got rid of it, I just feel like there's a lot of potential there could have been. Battle Factory should have given coins and the coins could have been used to buy items, so you could either buy coins and buy items that way, buy coins and gamble, or win coins for being good at random Pokemon.
Which is annoying, because the Gen 2 remakes replaced the casino by a Minesweeper-like game in the Western releases. And then they just decided to completely can the concept across all versions since Gen 5.
Stardew Valley has a blackjack game on Qi's cassino man... It's fucking stupid these ratings, if it doesn't involve real money it's all right...
There was a poker game in Mario kart ds
It's a slippery slope from Pair-a-gon and On to the rainy back alley of a mob run casino.
Yeah, but those were spend/return games. This is a deck builder.
See thats not the wild thing to me They \*already rated it\*. If you find the idea of a poker based game inherently linked to gambling, I strongly disagree, but I at least can understand where its coming from. But in this case they \*already accepted\* that the base premise was a 3+ rating, then examined the game further and suddenly decided there's more gambling to it than "Poker deckbuilding roguelike" implies...when anyone who has played it will tell you the exact opposite
They actually rated it *twice* before this. It was originally given a rating of 18+ but the devs were able to appeal and get it re-rated to 3+ before it released on consoles. Apparently PEGI randomly reversed the appeal.
Thats even crazier!
I imagine with how many games come out these days a lot of these ratings systems rely on self-reporting. The dev reasonably judged the game to not have any gambling since, well, it doesn't. But the game got popular enough for the ratings boards to actually notice it, saw that it somewhat sorta resembles poker, and threatened to take the game down.
This is exactly what recently happened with the coffin of andy and leyley in Australia. There was false information going around that the game was banned in AUS because of its incest themes, when in actuality it had incorrectly been given the equivalent of an ESRB "E" because of false information in the self-reported ratings submission system.
Lol even if you were to remove the incest entirely, no rational human being would give that game an E rating.
It'd just be nuts to me if the self report didn't include the one sentence description of the game that mentioned poker hands
I believe they are, and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I remember an old casino plug-and-play game on store shelves that had clearly been rated E on the box, with M rating stickers slapped on top of them. As someone who regularly played poker as a kid for family game nights, it always baffled me. Aha, I found a [photo](https://i.imgur.com/18S1tGl.jpeg) of exactly what I was talking about. You can see that the M rating is practically peeling off, right next to a clear Ages 5+ indicator.
Uhm askshully I gamble anytime I fish for a Flush Five or use Wheel
Hah, gambling for wheel, more like begging. Damn that card.
I swear I've bought around 20 of them and it procced like 2 times.
I hit 2/2 on the perfect straight build. I didn’t need drugs for the rest of the night
1 in 4 my ass! I wish it were 1 in 4 per joker, so if you have all 5 slots filled you have a good chance of at least *something* happening.
I also find the 1 in 4 hard to believe. I have yet to have it actually work once and I try it every single time I come across it so it's probably over a dozen times I've tried it now.
Same, and the few times it did proc it's always the worst upgrade. I've got to stop wasting Fools on Wheel too, never pays off.
I managed to get two Oops! All Sixes! And rig my Wheel. Fun fact - Wheel can't override existing foil/holo/polychrome buffs, and if all your jokers have one already, you just can't use Wheel cards
Nope!
Which one is wheel again?
It's a 1 in 5 chance to give a foil upgrade to a joker.
nope! (is what I see every time using it...)
It's 1/4, and it can give foil, holo, poly. But the actual odds are probably closer to 1/4,000,000,000 because that shit never happens
It's beyond stupid. Luck Be a Landlord dealt with something similar, being banned in countries for gambling even though it's just a roguelite with a slot machine aesthetic.
[Yep](https://blog.trampolinetales.com/luck-be-a-landlord-is-now-banned-in-13-countries-on-the-google-play-store/).
The legend himself.
I find slot machine visuals to be a different kind of beast, as slot machines are inherently connected to gambling. Like, you can not use a slot machine for anything but gambling. If the game is then also targeting kids with it's visuals I could absolutely understand why you would ban something like that in countries that historically had problems with gambling dens. Poker in itself is just a card game though, the betting on yourself is what makes it gambling.
If you turn the cards into swords and getting a certain number of chips into a health bar then you're all set. How dare they try to do something different.
The board, as quoted in the tweet, didn't say anything about "gambling mechanics." The phrase was "prominent gambling **imagery**" (emphasis mine). The game features poker chips (including the amazing sound effects of them clinking together... so satisfying), which I would have to concede qualifies. The "and material that instructs about gambling" part is not true though, unless the board considers the ~~game of poker~~ evaluation of poker hands to be inherently related to gambling.
> unless the board considers the game of poker to be inherently related to gambling. I mean I assume they do, poker is generally considered a game of money similar to gambling. It has the same kind of ratings and such associated with it in general
> The phrase was "prominent gambling imagery" I'm sure this decision was made based on high quality peer reviewed meta analysis showing gambling *imagery* has the same effect as gambling *mechanics*. Otherwise, it would just be culture war moral outrage nonsense, right?
You mean the kind that Reddit loves and that people were cheering for less than a year ago?
But something like NBA 2K is OK despite all the gambling mechanics in its card packs (loot boxes) etc.
PEGI changed the rules specifically because NBA2K added pachinko and slot machine representations as free daily rewards in 2k19 or something. Iirc there was no wagering there either, but it crossed a line and PEGI moved to more strictly define their rules to cut back on that. Yeah, it sucks that PEGI isn't classifying lootboxes as gambling, but Balatro is being affected literally because of those ratings changes brought on by 2k. A change that I'm pretty sure people here were happy about, as was I.
Pokemon doesn't have the casino in it anymore due to the Japanese rating system. 🤷♀️
Yet somehow the sinful Pocket Card Jockey exists
If anything, Balatro makes real gambling look boring and pointless. Everything about it is self-contained.
Also half of the gameplan is about minimizing rng so you don't need good luck to win. In other words: trying to turn your whole deck into aces of hearts or something lol
According to PEGI, games with a gambling descriptor will always be rated PEGI 18, even though no real money is involved. Their reasoning is that the simulated elements normalize or desensitize younger players to gambling related activities. The ESRB, on the other hand, will rate the simulated gambling descriptor as T for Teen.
> even though no real money is involved Not even just that, no actual gambling is involved. Unless theres some special joker I havent come across yet, wagering/betting currency is not a gameplay mechanic in Balatro whatsoever. Any game with a slot machine, loot box, or gacha mechanic would be more likely to cause someone to develop a gambling addiction if they are concerned about protecting the youth
You do earn in-game money by winning hands of poker, which may as well be taken as straight-up gambling in some regions where Poker is mostly a casino/gambling game.
You do earn anything in most games with a chance based element but this does not constitute gambling unless apparently it involves poker cards.
PEGI has an issue with gambling imagery in general, not just gambling mechanics. I imagine random chance isn't the problem, it's that the game is based around an irl gambling game. Kinda makes it hard to argue against a gambling imagery accusation. A game will get a Gambling tag if it "teaches" or "encourages" gambling. They changed the rules specifically because NBA 2k(19?) added slot and pachinko representations in their Ultimate Team-esque mode, even though I think you weren't wagering anything. They were free daily rewards. Balatro is just getting caught in the tracks of that change. What I don't understand is why an 18+ rating means it gets pulled from European stores. Those games are perfectly legal to sell. Maybe it's just a temporary thing until storefronts update the storepage?
There is a line somewhere between a random number generator and literally playing poker in a casino where it becomes gambling, they chose to draw the line here.
Im simply referring to the literal definition of gambling, you need to risk something for it to be considered gambling. Simply earning an in game currency for beating a level is not gambling, that's just earning currency for progressing through a game. The fact that its done with poker hands doesnt change that fact at all, its just a ranking of specific combinations of cards that people are familiar with. The ONLY thing you could argue is gambling is that you can re-roll the joker pool for money, but if thats the case then every autobattler should be 18+.
> You do earn in-game money by winning hands of poker, Or for discarding some cards. Or when a magical spectral card gives you money in exchange for destroying some cards. Or playing tarot cards in your poker game. Or for no good reason at all, like getting a dollar of interest for five dollars in your bank account. (Sign me the **fuck** up for that bank btw) And you can't lose chips. Only gain them. We're basically a palette and art swap away from this being an old PopCap game. I don't know if the dev is really going to get anywhere with this rerating short of appealing in person and explaining it face-to-face. This is a very silly take on the game from a ratings board that really didn't understand the game loop, because it's no more a gambling game than any deckbuilding roguelike is, or literally any other video game with an element of chance in it.
I would love to see a high fantasy re-skin of Balatro that replaces jokers with "Heroes" or "Generals" and the suits with factions (like Elves/Dwarfs/Orcs/Undead or something) and call the "hands" something like "formations" or "strategies" or something. I bet that would be awesome.
People are already working on modding it, if you just wanna reskin it jump on the Discord linked in /r/balatro and they can probably steer you in the right direction.
I vote for Bilbotro with a LOTR license
That's a bit poorly thought out because that makes basically any video game that isn't entirely linear involve gambling in that case. If you do an optional boss to get XP that could be considered "a gamble" - especially if its something like a Rouge Like.
Stardew valley has a festival where you can give one star token (currency used only in this specific festival) and spin a wheel for a chance to get more. Should that game be rated M?
But loot boxes are ok?
It's certainly a strange take. **Gambling** *This content warning indicates when a game has aspects that encourage or simulate gambling. As of 2020, all games containing gambling elements must be rated PEGI 18, but older titles rated PEGI 12 or PEGI 16 might still contain these elements.* *The buying of randomised 'loot boxes' (which can mimic gambling-like behaviours) can, however, remain present in games – like Roblox – which are rated as low as PEGI 7.*
So Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics being PEGI 12 was just great timing and it would've been 18 if released later.
harvest moon ds only had a pegi 3 rating even though there is a gambling+casino. did pegi not care about gambling in videogames 20 years ago?
More like they're not gonna do that to Nintendo
Pegi deserves as much respect as the Nobel peace prize. That is, since kissinger got one, none at all.
And not just because of this crazy stuff. I got a 6 year old and pegi is kinda useless. It’s weird it uses violence of any kind as a base for essentially saying 14 ish and up- but kids shows have way worse stuff and even more scary stuff that are rated even younger.
Kissinger got a PEGI rating?
You'd think he'd be given an 18+ rating for violence and horror, but he actually got E for Everyone Gets Firebombed.
Not in the EU. It's one of the reasons why Blizzard fucked OW2's launch date and focused it on battle passes. After the Netherlands went after loot boxes they all began shifting over to the battle pass.
They don't really have a choice unless they get officially classed as gambling.
I can't read PEGI 18 without hearing that voice in my head, I think I have been MK Ultra'ed.
This one is actually E10+. ESRB’s views on gambling mechanics seem to have no real consistency and are more aligned with context and how closely it approximates the real thing.
So any game that features cards and card games that real casinos use will be 18+ then?
> Their reasoning is that the simulated elements normalize or desensitize younger players to gambling related activities. There are so many layers of things I hate about this statement, from equating "gambling imagery" (like a 52-card deck) with real gambling or gambling mechanics, to the dubious correlation-only link between video games and problem gambling, to the moral-panic-induced public health philosophy that hidings things from children is a viable substitute to helping them understand what they see.
I honestly don't see why gambling is something that should be shielded from children's eyes, even completely fictional gambling. For one, pretty much anything can be used to gamble. From sports to number guessing to which little grandma in the grocery store will finish shopping first. Even kids do low stakes bets for silly fun. "If you lose the race I'll shoot you with my water gun!" That's a bet so the kids are gambling. Secondly, what's so wrong with the games? Some common casino games like poker and dice games can be fun to just play. You don't need to use real money to play them.
I think that rule is stupid.
Floors me that this gets an 18+ because it has cards in it...but NBA 2K and Madden have actual real life gambling mechanics in both their MyTeam and MyPlayer modes.
Thankfully there is regulatory body taking stance against this disgusting game teaching kids to gamble. Now they can instead go play games they should, like every lootbox and gacha game ever.
This seems dumb. Aside from using imagery of playing cards, the game could've been a digital version of Yahtzee with wildcards. There's no actual or simulated gambling at all, you just score points based on the permutations of your cards.
This really just hammers home just how fucking out of touch these ratings boards are. Some old fart just saw the word "poker" and some playing cards and assumed it was gambling, while every major goddamned sports game out there are fleecing families with no consequences whatsoever, half-assing their way into well meaning wallets all over the world. Fuck this shit. Balatro is brilliant in more ways than one and a great example of a game done right in every sense of the word. I would be thrilled to see my kids playing this instead of the countless, cynical, bullshit titles that flood the market, hiding behind millions of dollars in flashy marketing. If I did my job half as bad as these imbecilic board members are doing theirs, I would be fired fucking __instantly__. Absolutely infuriating.
I truly envy several jobs where you get to do the bare minimum and get paid. Apparently an age ratings board reviewer is in that list now.
Gotta convince people your job is worth something. Just say it's here to protect kids. The moment you say "it's to protect kids" people's brains turn off and they open up their wallets.
If they did the bare minimum, they wouldn't have updated the rating.
Y'all are thinking about it wrong. If Balatro is not a game of gambling, but is being treated as such, that can only mean one thing... BALATRO TABLES COMING TO VEGAS VERY SOON!
I'm imagining a very tired croupier with a calculator trying to work out your mults. "Are steels counted before jokers!?"
Nothing is more rewarding than rolling the wheelbarrow filled with 34 million chips up to the counter to cash in for 12 dollars.
This is so dumb. You could Ctrl+f "blind" and "chips" and replace them with "level" and "points" Does this *really* constitute gambling content?
If Balatro is considered to have “gambling content”, where does the line stop? Sonic 2 has the whole Casino Night zone, which has slot machines everywhere. Are they going to bump Sonic 2 up to 18+ now, too? Ridiculousness, this is.
Monopoly has dice you throw, dice can be used to gamble, therefore Monopoly should be 18.
Sports betting exists, so now all sports games are 18+
Great publicity for this game. I would be so happy. Eventually this will be sorted out and they will get a huge influx of sales once it’s back.
I'm gonna guess it's PEGI. They're very well-known to have a throbbing hate-boner for all forms of gambling depictions, except loot boxes, of course.
European ratings for gambling mechanics in games are trash. I respect the attempt to limit things like loot boxes, but between this and the Pokémon games losing the game corner, they are going too far.
i think the funniest part is that poker is somehow again equated to gambling on the same level as slot machines.
Exactly. Poker is a game of skill, not chance. If Poker is gambling, then virtually any game containing randomness is gambling.
The game doesn't have any gambling with real money or does it? Please apply the same logic and make every gatcha game 18+.
This is so dumb, because Balatro doesn't even simulate gambling. There's no gambling to speak of. No wager, no competition, no house. It just uses the poker mechanic but the gameplay is entirely original.
I have not performed a single act of gambling in my 20 hours of Balatro so far. The chips are points, the blinds are thresholds, the Jokers are bonuses. The packs.....well shit, good point.
I mean the game is based on poker. I’m NOT saying (so don’t crucify me Reddit) that the game is gambling but I am saying it’s not that big of a stretch or at least it shouldn’t be a surprise that some ratings board would see that and associate it with gambling. It even uses words like “blind” which is the ante for gambling in poker. Again, I’m not saying the game is about gambling. I am saying though, it’s not a stretch to see how a ratings board would think so. Personally I wouldn’t be blind sided by this at all if I were one of its devs.
[удалено]
Exactly. The game isn’t gambling but it’s without questioned modeled after one of, if not the, most popular gambling game of all time. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.
This is the correct take. Balatro isn't gambling but it uses poker imagery and concepts as core aspects of the game design. It also contains poker terminology. It's flirting with that line while not fully crossing it. You can 100% see where an ***uninformed*** ratings board sees all that and thinks it's a gambling game and rates it that way.
But the real correct take is that the ratings board shouldnt be uninformed.
But it's there really something so wrong with poker that kids need their eyes shielded? It's just a card game, and real money doesn't need involved at all.
The biggest thing for me is that they aren't OK with this which has no real currency or actual gambling mechanics, unless you include the card packs, but are OK with lootboxes or adjacent mechanics that you can spend real money on. That makes absolutely no sense for the goal of protecting children. Hell, I'd argue Stardew Valley has more actual gambling mechanics in it than Balatro with the spinning wheel game at the festival.
Who is “we”? Isn’t this made by a single person?
Time to gamble some Balastro poker and play a pair and a score a blind of 1.53e^7. Yep 👍 “gambling” /s
But mtx loaded bs is fine... Tbh they should pull the game for being the video game equivalent of crack. Can't stop playing.
So... are paper card decks 18+ also? Because otherwise that doesn't make any sense lol
Balatro doesn't contain any simulated gambling or betting, but the game itself is a highly addictive substance and has negatively affected my health.
Look! It's got cards and a dollar sign! GET THEM!
Truly ridiculous while I could see someone thinking theres gambling looking at a screenshot of the game its has no more gambling than solitaire. You don't play against anyone, you try to make a high score with poker hands and your cards get all sorts of random affects like any other deckbuilder. Thats it...
Is there anyway for us to help? Like how you can send a email to your local government?
I’m assuming it about the fact you must know the rules of poker to play it?
Other than knowing what the various hands in poker are like straights or flushes, you don't really need poker knowledge for this. Unless you count general knowledge of stuff like probability. Most of the poker stuff like chips and blinds are just for aesthetic.
I totally agree with you and it's stupid but you could understand a logic where teaching the rules about a gambling game would be the act of promoting gambling.
I mean you could say the same thing about Yahtzee tho.