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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.
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.
Actual gambling - 3+
Suggestion of gambling - 18+
IRL poker cards from the dollar store - !
The queen of hearts is inherently obscene, that's why my copy of Alice in Wonderland is rated 18+
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.
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.
You didn't ask the question the ea way.
You're supposed to ask with a hefty bribe.
Don't need a bribe when EA is the one on the board doing the ratings.
Any proof of this?
Seems like an advertising opportunity. First solitaire game rated 18+ without any gambling, I assume no nudity, language, etc.
There's actually lots of foul language while playing Balatro, but it all comes from the person playing, not the game itself.
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.
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.
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:
Good game but Haven't played digitally; on wishlist:
Slay the spire, slice and dice, dicey dungeons are also up there as mobile games.
What does this mean practically? Are they not allowed to sell it some places anymore if it's 18+?
Maybe if they decide to make box copies of the game.
Baltaro devs may need to invest in gambling to earn enough money to bribe PEGI the way EA almost certainly does.
What do you mean, almost? EA is literally a member of Video Games Europe, the organization which manages PEGI.
So, we're moving on from bribery and straight to conflict of interest?
This is the case for both PEGI and ESRB, they are insider operated organizations developed to skirt regulations in the form of 'self governance'.
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
I’m willing to bet PEGI was lobbied to push for that 18+ rating by ea and other publishers because balatro is taking revenue from them. They don’t get how a game without microtransactions is doing better than they are
No need to lobby, EA are the ones making the decision
Learning the names and ranking of poker hands is the devil!
Dragon Quest 11 has a T-for-Teen rating and it's got a literal casino built into the game. Roulette, poker, and slot machines. This isn't even uncommon for JRPGs. Curious how the ratings agencies just glaze over this fact when assigning their scores.
This is the part I can't figure out. It's not just indie games: ages ago, Pokémon dropped the casinos from their games specifically to avoid having their age rating bumped in NA and EU. So clearly they sometimes account for gambling in side content. But somehow other franchises have kept them in, and aren't suffering.
Does it just depend on whether or not the particular person assigned to review your game is a hardass about particular things?
Self-regulated organization my ass.