You will not see Balatro IP being used by casinos or gambling companies – the developer has forbidden this in his will

My own experience with gambling doesn't go much further than the time I won a few dollars on a slot machine in Vegas and then refused to play again, claiming I had “beaten Vegas.” the biggest gambler That aside, since this industry is largely built on preying on the vulnerable, it's no surprise that Balatro developer LocalThunk is against the malicious use of its poker puzzle game, and has included a special clause in its will about this.

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“I so hate the idea of ​​Balatro becoming a real gambling game that I recently made a stipulation in my will that the Balatro IP is not to be sold or licensed to any gambling company/casino,” Twxngled LocalThunk wrote in response to another user’s tongue-in-cheek “conspiracy theory” post that Balatro is secretly running a psychological operation to get kids into casinos.

In March, Balatro was temporarily removed from digital console stores after European ratings board PEGI changed the age rating from 3+ to 18+ after deciding that the game promoted gambling with “significant visuals”.

“I still believe the rating is unfair, but there are some gray areas for PEGI to interpret and that's the case at this point,” LocalThunk said in a Reddit AMA at the time. “I guess what I'm most disappointed in is that other games with actual gambling mechanics aren't rated the same way because of their appearance/theme.”

A response to LocalThunk's tweet about the will came from Purple Moss Collectors, the developers of the upcoming Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, who asked LocalThunk to forward the wording so they could do the same. I saw D&DG described as “Balatro but Blackjack,” which is understandable at this point, and there's a good chance that this is one of the Balatro “imitators” referenced in the original tweet LocalThunk responded to. But as LocalThunk points out, D&DG was released to the public before Balatro — an early version has been floating around on Itch for over a year now. Either way, it's a nice show of support.

“It draws you back not to exploit psychological weakness, but to celebrate the inherent joy of learning, mastering and beating a system that plays around impossible odds,” Katharine (peacefully RPS) Balatro wrote in her review. And I think nothing sums up the fundamental difference at the core of these types of games better than the actual gambling, even if PEGI strangely disagrees.

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