Popular poker-inspired mobile app Balatro’s Pan-European app Information age rating has been lowered from 18 to 12, fueling the ongoing controversy about gambling in video games.
Balatro is one of the most popular mobile games in 2024. The game is a card game that has some poker aspects. The goal is to make winning combinations, and the game is supplemented with additional features like joker cards.
Europe’s gaming regulator has lowered the age rating of the title after a successful appeal from the game’s publisher Sold Out Sales & Marketing, finding that “while the game does explain the various hands in poker, the roguelike deck-building game included mitigating fantastical elements”.
This change is despite the game’s usage of purchasing ‘lucky dip’ style items where players can buy new costumes, power-ups or other benefits without knowing exactly what item they are going to receive.
Loot boxes and lucky dips have long been a topic of discussion in the video game business, with critics seeing them as a kind of gambling that may be inserted into games that are available to children.
For example, the FIFA series, now called EA FC, has long had loot box-style features in its Ultimate Team offering, in which players may buy FIFA points’ and buy packs where they can receive random players — good or terrible.
These fifa packs are used yet the fifa and now ea fc titles have always been classified as suitable for anyone aged 3 and beyond.
This has led to several governments taking action on the usage of loot boxes and gambling mechanics added to video games, with Belgium banning loot boxes in 2018 without changing the age ratings assigned to these games.
The developer of Balatro, LocalThunk, cited loot box games as the reason that he feels the age rating of Balatro is unfair, despite the fact it crosses over with poker — a true gambling game.
But some have said that Balatro has taught players about poker and its often intricate rules, leading to demands for stronger regulations that have been put down by the acts of PEGI.
Alongside the age rating drop for Balatro came one for Luck Be A Landlord, a game with a slot machine mechanic that was formerly classified 18, but has also been downgraded to 12.
