Fuck PEGI, their ratings always sucked and weren’t useful at all. Full blown swearing? 13+. One cigar through 500 hours of gameplay? Adults only. Never cared, never will.
I still wonder why the hell is this game classified as a roguelike? It’s poker mixed with MTG. Also, why are you crying dude? You made a literal slot machine.
That’s why he said roguelite. Semipermanency (being able to unlock upgrades for future runs) is what separates the roguelite from a roguelike. In a roguelike, every run you start from 0, in a roguelite you unlock things that make differences in future runs (in the case of balatro: different decks, new jokers, …)
I wish lawmakers had some balls on this subject. If there’s gambling, they should have to register as a gambling company and comply with all the other restrictions on gambling advertisements in each jurisdiction.
The problem here is that Baltaro does not have gambling. It just uses cards and chips as the basis for playing the game. Like Magic the Gathering or Inscryption.
There used to be ante in MTG. You’d play for cards in each other’s decks and were to keep them if you won the game. Plus, there were a number of cards actively interacted with the ante’d cards and added or changed what’s in the ante
They also base it on poker, yeah cards can transform each other but it’s still quite literally a poker game. This isn’t MTG. (Which is just real life loot boxes)
But poker is only a gambling game because when you play it you “give up” something of value in the hope of winning more through playing and randomness. What makes it gambling is not the cards or the chips it’s the gambling aspect. Balatro uses card and poker hands, and so does “yatzhee”, but it does not use any gambling mechanic. Lootboxes on the other hand use gambling mechanic.
Although you may be right about why they did it, I feel like imagery of gambling is not meant to be ‘something that is in any way related to something that happens to be gambling’, it’s when gambling is shown but you’re not the one gambling. If someone in game is gambling that’s imagery, if a game uses cards for something that is not gambling it’s not imagery.
This isn’t really new. Solitaire has had ads for over a decade now since Windows 8, and there is a monthly premium subscription to remove them. As I understand it they also don’t show during offline play, but might be wrong about that.
There are daily challenges and things like that which is what I would refer to as online play. Not that crazy imho of you’ve put thousands of hours into vanilla solitaire that you may welcome something to spice it up.
If it makes you feel better/worse, the subscription is shared across multiple games. I was playing a bunch of Microsoft Jigsaw at one point (don’t ask), and while you could play as much as you’d like for free, the fact that they squeezed ads into it to extort you (or more likely, clueless older people) really cheapened the whole thing.
They had a lot of pretty photos which were probably not free, but come on, this is Microsoft, they have the money. I think this should’ve been bundled with Windows for free. I truly think a lot of people might even look back on it fondly the way they do with a lot of the older bundled-in games. We will take for granted how much the default option with any sort of technology around us has an impact on us as kids. Maybe not everyone, but not everyone loved pinball or inkball.
Actual textbook enshittification: what was once a space for a nice default thing to fall back on if you were bored and had their operating system has now become an “opportunity” to “generate more business.” Very sad. Computers are impossibly wonderful machines, everyone who has access to one should be able to enjoy a few basic things, packed in, for free - with no strings attached (looking at you candy crush).
I’m sure there’s a nice free or paid jigsaw game made with love out there that could satisfy that itch I felt that one week in 2020. Hm.
Edit: I have now redownloaded Microsoft Jigsaw and might just expand this comment into a full post/rant about the state of modern consumer software through the lens of Microsoft’s current casual games suite
I can’t see any news that you can ‘pay to remove ads’ but lots of “how do i remove ads in solitaire” with settings instructions or registry edits so i think op is only half right
I can’t speak for other people, I don’t even play solitaire. Realistically, I imagine most people get new PCs with newer Windows versions and play whatever solitaire is on there.
I did. I’m not going to go buy it for this though. They literally use poker terms, poker imagery, and real poker hands. Saying it’s just because there’s cards involved is disingenuous.
You could use the same for majong or pachinko like games like Peggle. The issue is the actual gambling, not just the game elements or risk, reward, and points going up. Loot boxes are 10× worse.
Wut? Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is the European equivalent of ESRB. Their ratings matter because they have an obvious bias against indies, which hurts their sales.
The thing is, this is likely going to affect their sales to some degree.
As a parent, you may have age lock on your child’s account, or search games by rating, or just not know what this game is when asked to buy it but judging by rating.
I don’t know how significant of an impact that is, but it’s unfair.
I think they’ve done them a favour in a way. If this was day one then it might hurt them but they’re past the point of like 90% of their sales I bet, and now pegi looking like incompetent dinosaurs is just a free second wave of social media exposure
Hngh. Balatro already had a bunch of hassle on Switch eShop due to the PEGI ratings change.
Earlier, Nintendo somehow got a PEGI 12 rating for 51 Worldwide Games, which includes poker and blackjack. I wonder what they argued to avoid the 18 rating. “Sure, this compilation has poker and blackjack, but it’s not like we made it fun.” (It’s adequate but compared to Balatro it’s very much a non-frills experience.)
“sure our game has gambling elements, but we’re Nintendo so shut the fuck up and give us a better rating because you’re a private company in the business of giving ratings”
Loot boxes suck but the only thing separating this game from gambling is the use of real money. It’s literally a poker game.
This is the Steam Store description -
Combine valid poker hands with unique Joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress. You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
Yeah they were always going to get PEGI 18. This moaning is just a way to sell their game.
Yatzhee is dice. It uses combinations of numbers. They turn into points. Before you make any other ridiculous comparisons the idea is to perform to standard. Not to lower the standard. Gambling is a serious addiction and making games about it is a serious issue.
In Balatro, the Ante is the boss’s health and chips are the amount of damage done to a boss. The poker hands are just attacks done to the boss’s health. They use poker terms because it’s inspired by card games, not because there’s gambling.
I didn’t say there was and neither did PEGI. The issue is all the terminology and visuals are gambling related. This is like giving a cigarette smoker a nicotine vape and saying it’s not cigarettes. It’s technically true but you’d be insane to authorize it for kids.
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
The whole point of the post is real gambling is rated as totally safe for kids. As long as it doesn’t use card or poker chips as imagery. Why is getting kids to actually gamble ok? Why is imagery associated with gambling so much worse than actual gambling for kids?
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
So then explain why games with actual real money gambling aren’t rated 18+, is gambling “imagery” with no gambling really that much worse than having actual gambling?
Balatro doesn’t have anything like gambling. There’s no betting. You don’t even have an opponent. The chips are only points, and the goal is to get as high a score as you can. The rules vary wildly from poker in ways that could never work with multiple players, let alone with real cards. It just looks like poker at the start and that description helps give you an initial idea of how to play.
this is starting to be horseshit. Every windows computer has a version of fucking solitare on it , there are other card based games that don’t get this treatment, and the lootboxes are actual gambling.
I thought at the start it was a type of beurocratical problem, but it’s been too long.
That would be the point, yes. Balatro has cards and chips, but chips are just there for keeping points. If Balatro is 18+ for gambling imagery, then so should Solitaire. That would be stupid, so Balatro shouldn’t get it, either.
I think the important note is it’s not just the cards in Balatro. Is it right? Not in my opinion. You have to admit tho, that it uses waaaaay more gambling imagery (you make antes for fuck’s sake)
But it has to be for something. And in Balatro, there simply isn’t any gambling. You never wager anything to win anything based on that wager. All you have are points, and you can neither wager them, nor lose them in any way, chance-based or otherwise.
The term Ante in the game is used instead of “round” or “level”. It’s a measure of how far you’ve gotten. Each “ante” is made up of three “stakes”, point totals you need to beat in a set number of hands played and cards discarded.
There’s no aspect of choosing how much you risk, of “ante-ing up”, or how much you stake. You either beat the points goal (called “chips”) or you lose. There’s no playing of your hand against other hands, bluffing about how good your hand may be to convince others to fold, etc. It’s just you against the score goal. If you beat it faster than the amount of hands you’re given to work with you get extra rewards.
The game has no elements where you stake chips for rewards or anything like that. It borrows basic elements of scoring mechanics from poker, and uses a lot of poker terms for other purposes, but the closest part to gambling is the ability to buy random card packs between rounds (to customize your deck instead of just having the standard 52 card deck).
In between rounds you have access to buy various things to add further modifiers to your scoring, and to adjust the composition of your deck in order to make getting specific combinations more likely.
You can learn most of this in about 5 minutes with the demo, or by taking some time to watch someone else play on youtube.
Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (a common mechanic in roguelixe games, where going to a higher ascension/“stake” adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).
“Antes” are what Balatro calls its levels. Each level consists of 3 stages, which the game calls “blinds” (small/big/boss).
In poker, you don’t “beat” an ante, it’s part of what you bet. You also don’t “reach” blinds, nor is there such a thing as a “boss blind” in poker. And the word “bet” or any synonym should be pretty conspicuous by its absence in Balatro’s description. There is no gambling without betting/wagering, after all.
So yes, if you’re familiar with poker, that description should make it obvious that the words have different meanings in the game than they do in poker.
The only actual ‘mechanic’ that’s actually the same in Balatro as in poker is what comprises the different hands, and their relative value. And even then, there are also hands in Balatro that don’t exist in poker at all (five of a kind, flush house, etc.).
The game is literally made up of gambling imagery. From cards to chips to terms, the whole fuckin 9 yards. MY POINT IS ITS NOT GAMBLING, ITS GAMBLING IMAGERY.
I prefaced the whole fuckin statement I started with with saying it’s bullshit. DESPITE THAT BULLSHIT THE LABEL IS NOT INCORRECT. I hope you can stop being fucking obtuse and see my point after I’ve rephrased it multiple times.
It’s near the line, I agree, I see your point, but it’s just the terminology and no gambling mechanics. You don’t set the ante, you just play. They could change the name ante to level and it would be the same. It’s not like you look at your stuff and decide how much you’re willing to risk. (You could argue skipping blinds is this sort of risk analysis like gambling but that’s hardly unique to Balatro.) There is no benefit from stopping earlier because if you lose on ante one or lose on ante seven it’s the same outcome. Also, if you choose to restart one ante one or ante seven it’s the same outcome. Because it’s just a score keeping mechanism. Nothing more.
Not entirely sure about the European PEGI, but the American ESRB is funded by the same companies that it regulates. It was created after the outcry about violent games and was the industry self-regulating to avoid the government getting more involved.
It is a lobby group for the industry, for better and in this case very much for worse.
i got curious and looks like PEGI is somewhat similar at least. The ISFE is a self-regulating/co-regulating (w/e that means) body. There seem to be some kinda independent audits but… Looks like they don’t audit so good, if this article is evidence
but… Looks like they don’t audit so good, if this article is evidence
That’s the whole issue with it being a lobby group. It makes them a ton of money, so they are incentivised against making a rating for it because that would draw more attention/limit sales.
And that’s where the whole government lobbying part comes in.
Eeeeh, at least then there would theoretically be public accountability. The FCC has limited censorship power that they’re generally unobjectionable with.
I’m honestly more concerned with the censorship from private enterprises than with government consorship currently. Less accountability and less recourse.
It also really only becomes censorship if the rating system is used to prohibit speech. If we instead made it more like the nutritional guidelines on food it could instead give more of a content breakdown than setting an arbitrary age.
I largely agree, but the interests have gotten misaligned. Back then it was the threat of regulation which changed things up, I think the governments should do a little more of that.
PEGI and many other groups are private groups. They’re not an authority of any form. They’re not associated with government, public regulation, or public election. They’re a group of people that create their own standards outside of the ISO or any actual regulation representing the public.
Some countries do have actual public systems, but many just have these private groups that know best.
This is all well and true, but it’s important to note that these organizations exist as a sidestep to regulation, they are formed by industry insiders as a promise to the regulators that they will be honest about how they rate games (or movies or music) so that the government doesn’t actually get involved and do it’s job.
It’s a form of regulatory capture that allows the industry itself to decide what is harmful to us.
It’s basically the definition of conflict of interest.
In Austria PEGI is “enforced” in Vienna while USK is “enforced” in Salzburg (and Germany, the reason why they buy all their games here). And PEGI might be shit, but USK is a million times worse.
German Authorities (technically not USK but USK is affiliated to them completely banned Wolfenstein, Dying Light, etc. Not 18+ or whatever it’s straight up illegal to promote or openly sell them in Germany.
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Fuck PEGI, their ratings always sucked and weren’t useful at all. Full blown swearing? 13+. One cigar through 500 hours of gameplay? Adults only. Never cared, never will.
Violence and gore? 13+. Some boobs? Adults only.
Killing good, love bad.
And people pretend that only American ratings systems pull this kind of bullshit.
If anybody knows about love it’s rimjob_rainer.
Balatro is a hard drug worse than heroin. We need to protect our kids from the bottomless pit of roguelite games
Thank God it’s ten dollars.
I almost downloaded it.
If you’ve ever spent money on a movie theatre ticket, you value your time at $7-$20 dollars an hour. This… is thousands of hours of entertainment.
So, you’re suggesting we make games per hour subscription? A good idea /s
I’m not saying it’s not worth ten dollars.
I just don’t feel like spending ten dollars.
I still wonder why the hell is this game classified as a roguelike? It’s poker mixed with MTG. Also, why are you crying dude? You made a literal slot machine.
It has rouge features of building up a lot of utility in each run
Semi-permanency is not a defining feature of roguelikes, in most of them every run starts from scratch.
That’s why he said roguelite. Semipermanency (being able to unlock upgrades for future runs) is what separates the roguelite from a roguelike. In a roguelike, every run you start from 0, in a roguelite you unlock things that make differences in future runs (in the case of balatro: different decks, new jokers, …)
Examples:
Hades is a roguelite.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a roguelike.
No, rouge is the stuff that ladies put on their cheeks. You mean rogue, as in wildcard, untameable, privateer.
Yes thank you
I’m hopelessly addicted to gatcha. When I saw this I bought Balatro.
I wish lawmakers had some balls on this subject. If there’s gambling, they should have to register as a gambling company and comply with all the other restrictions on gambling advertisements in each jurisdiction.
The problem here is that Baltaro does not have gambling. It just uses cards and chips as the basis for playing the game. Like Magic the Gathering or Inscryption.
Is there betting (such as buy-in / ante) in Balatro?
Is there in MtG?
There used to be ante in MTG. You’d play for cards in each other’s decks and were to keep them if you won the game. Plus, there were a number of cards actively interacted with the ante’d cards and added or changed what’s in the ante
No, there are no bets, no buy in.
Using chips is even a stretch honestly. There are some chip imagery here and there but otherwise ‘chips’ are just how points are called.
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They also base it on poker, yeah cards can transform each other but it’s still quite literally a poker game. This isn’t MTG. (Which is just real life loot boxes)
But poker is only a gambling game because when you play it you “give up” something of value in the hope of winning more through playing and randomness. What makes it gambling is not the cards or the chips it’s the gambling aspect. Balatro uses card and poker hands, and so does “yatzhee”, but it does not use any gambling mechanic. Lootboxes on the other hand use gambling mechanic.
Which is why PEGI didn’t say it was literally gambling, they said it was imagery of gambling.
Although you may be right about why they did it, I feel like imagery of gambling is not meant to be ‘something that is in any way related to something that happens to be gambling’, it’s when gambling is shown but you’re not the one gambling. If someone in game is gambling that’s imagery, if a game uses cards for something that is not gambling it’s not imagery.
Windows comes bundled with solitaire. How is it allowed in schools?
I think the current microsoft version of solitaire has microtransactions and ads so is actually significantly worse
They added micro transactions and ads to fucking solitaire? How have I not heard about this till now…
This isn’t really new. Solitaire has had ads for over a decade now since Windows 8, and there is a monthly premium subscription to remove them. As I understand it they also don’t show during offline play, but might be wrong about that.
Offline play? It’s SOLITAIRE. Offline play should be the ONLY play, by default.
Feeling like I took crazy pills this morning…
There are daily challenges and things like that which is what I would refer to as online play. Not that crazy imho of you’ve put thousands of hours into vanilla solitaire that you may welcome something to spice it up.
If it makes you feel better/worse, the subscription is shared across multiple games. I was playing a bunch of Microsoft Jigsaw at one point (don’t ask), and while you could play as much as you’d like for free, the fact that they squeezed ads into it to extort you (or more likely, clueless older people) really cheapened the whole thing.
They had a lot of pretty photos which were probably not free, but come on, this is Microsoft, they have the money. I think this should’ve been bundled with Windows for free. I truly think a lot of people might even look back on it fondly the way they do with a lot of the older bundled-in games. We will take for granted how much the default option with any sort of technology around us has an impact on us as kids. Maybe not everyone, but not everyone loved pinball or inkball.
Actual textbook enshittification: what was once a space for a nice default thing to fall back on if you were bored and had their operating system has now become an “opportunity” to “generate more business.” Very sad. Computers are impossibly wonderful machines, everyone who has access to one should be able to enjoy a few basic things, packed in, for free - with no strings attached (looking at you candy crush).
I’m sure there’s a nice free or paid jigsaw game made with love out there that could satisfy that itch I felt that one week in 2020. Hm.
Edit: I have now redownloaded Microsoft Jigsaw and might just expand this comment into a full post/rant about the state of modern consumer software through the lens of Microsoft’s current casual games suite
Damn I have fond memories of those games back in xp and 7 era but ig enshitification is evitable when it comes to Microsoft
iirc it’s a subscription too
You’re being funny, right? Tell me you’re just kidding
I can’t see any news that you can ‘pay to remove ads’ but lots of “how do i remove ads in solitaire” with settings instructions or registry edits so i think op is only half right
Jesus I’m so glad I moved to Linux
Why, how, the fuck do you add microtransactions to fucking solitaire?!
Step 1: Add ads into [insert app of choice here] that are really annoying
Step 2: Make people pay to get rid of them. Bonus points if it’s a subscription
Step 3: People hate your app but it’s the one that’s installed by default so they use it anyway
Step 4: Profit
The fact that this business model earns moneu rather than car bombs annoys me.
It’s not really micro transactions as much as it is a monthly subscription to remove ads.
Its fucking solitaire you can play the old version from windows 95 online for free. This is beyond fucking stupid.
If that satisfies you then all the power to you.
Im a Utilitarian to a fault, of course I think the windows 95 version is just as valid. I wear everything down to scrap.
Real question, why wouldn’t the win95/xp version satisfy someone? Isn’t it the same thing with simpler graphics?
I can’t speak for other people, I don’t even play solitaire. Realistically, I imagine most people get new PCs with newer Windows versions and play whatever solitaire is on there.
I also don’t think it comes pre-installed anymore, you have to get it through Microsoft’s meme store that no one uses.
MTX and ads? Then it’s clearly only 3+ and should be allowed lol
Because you don’t place bets on your solitaire hand.
Maybe look into the game being discussed even a little before commenting on it.
I did. I’m not going to go buy it for this though. They literally use poker terms, poker imagery, and real poker hands. Saying it’s just because there’s cards involved is disingenuous.
You could use the same for majong or pachinko like games like Peggle. The issue is the actual gambling, not just the game elements or risk, reward, and points going up. Loot boxes are 10× worse.
No, we know that stuff that glorifies addictive activities can recruit or cause relapse as well.
And yet you say it’s cause of “gambling”. So you’re either lying about looking into it or lying about what you saw.
This is all on their steam page dude.
So lying about looking into it. Got it.
Give the kids Linux! Build a generation of superusers!
Supertux depicts imagery of speeding, misdemeanor and felony. +18 Age rating for Torvalds and all of his derivatives.
Why should we care what a talking horse pseudo-plinco game thinks should be the age rating of their competitors?
It’s a good question
Wut? Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is the European equivalent of ESRB. Their ratings matter because they have an obvious bias against indies, which hurts their sales.
I was jokingly referring to PEGGLE
Ah. I’m guessing most people missed the joke :)
Yeah they should’ve gone with Hank Hill’s wife
That’s the fun part, you don’t have to care. The first and only step is to just keep scrolling—better luck next time.
let’s just do like all parents buying the last Call of Duty to their 10-year-old and just don’t give a fuck about PEGI.
The thing is, this is likely going to affect their sales to some degree.
As a parent, you may have age lock on your child’s account, or search games by rating, or just not know what this game is when asked to buy it but judging by rating.
I don’t know how significant of an impact that is, but it’s unfair.
I think they’ve done them a favour in a way. If this was day one then it might hurt them but they’re past the point of like 90% of their sales I bet, and now pegi looking like incompetent dinosaurs is just a free second wave of social media exposure
One of the big advantages of steam and online storefronts in general is that it bypasses PEGI / ESRB and their unnecessary Draconian nonsense.
Hngh. Balatro already had a bunch of hassle on Switch eShop due to the PEGI ratings change.
Earlier, Nintendo somehow got a PEGI 12 rating for 51 Worldwide Games, which includes poker and blackjack. I wonder what they argued to avoid the 18 rating. “Sure, this compilation has poker and blackjack, but it’s not like we made it fun.” (It’s adequate but compared to Balatro it’s very much a non-frills experience.)
“sure our game has gambling elements, but we’re Nintendo so shut the fuck up and give us a better rating because you’re a private company in the business of giving ratings”
I believe 51 Games came out right before the stricter PEGI policy. Same year at least. The whole thing is very silly.
Might as well go all in on that new rating.
Balatro 1.5 Patch Notes.
All the Jokers now hang dong.
Big naturals Queens are worth double.
Steer clear of clowns emojis, bub.
Loot boxes suck but the only thing separating this game from gambling is the use of real money. It’s literally a poker game.
This is the Steam Store description -
Yeah they were always going to get PEGI 18. This moaning is just a way to sell their game.
Yahtzee uses “valid poker hands” and dice for scoring too. They sell that in toy stores.
Yatzhee is dice. It uses combinations of numbers. They turn into points. Before you make any other ridiculous comparisons the idea is to perform to standard. Not to lower the standard. Gambling is a serious addiction and making games about it is a serious issue.
You can’t gamble with dice?
I played Yahtzee once and now I hustle back alley Craps foe drug money.
If you want to be reductive everything is gambling. Even your birth.
I mean the kinds of gambling that might trigger someone with a gambling addiction. Isn’t that where you were coming from?
So is craps, one of the most popular casino games on the planet.
In Balatro, the Ante is the boss’s health and chips are the amount of damage done to a boss. The poker hands are just attacks done to the boss’s health. They use poker terms because it’s inspired by card games, not because there’s gambling.
The only gambling in this game is picking the goddamn wheel card even though I know it’s going to give me “nope!”
I didn’t say there was and neither did PEGI. The issue is all the terminology and visuals are gambling related. This is like giving a cigarette smoker a nicotine vape and saying it’s not cigarettes. It’s technically true but you’d be insane to authorize it for kids.
This analogy is garbage. The “nicotine vape for kids” isn’t Balatro, it’s loot boxes. Balatro would be like candy cigarettes.
Funny you should mention candy cigarettes.
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
A good link, maybe image may be harmful even if it’s without context
The whole point of the post is real gambling is rated as totally safe for kids. As long as it doesn’t use card or poker chips as imagery. Why is getting kids to actually gamble ok? Why is imagery associated with gambling so much worse than actual gambling for kids?
No the whole point of this post is performative outrage as marketing. They knew exactly what rating a faux casino game was going to get them.
You meant “chocolate cigarette” for your analogy, I remember they used to exists when I was a kid, don’t know if they still do.
Funny you should mention candy cigarettes.
Whether it’s candy cigarettes or a nicotine vape depends purely on the person playing the game. A gambling addict could easily see this as their nicotine vape, and it could easily prime kids for casinos.
So then explain why games with actual real money gambling aren’t rated 18+, is gambling “imagery” with no gambling really that much worse than having actual gambling?
Ask PEGI why loot boxes aren’t rated 18+, I’m not defending them.
It’s literally not.
These games not only have poker in the name, they are literally casino sims, and you play against other players:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/384180/Prominence_Poker/
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP2070-CUSA01104_00-UPUREPOKER000001/
Both pegi 12. Your argument is flawed.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Balatro doesn’t have anything like gambling. There’s no betting. You don’t even have an opponent. The chips are only points, and the goal is to get as high a score as you can. The rules vary wildly from poker in ways that could never work with multiple players, let alone with real cards. It just looks like poker at the start and that description helps give you an initial idea of how to play.
this is starting to be horseshit. Every windows computer has a version of fucking solitare on it , there are other card based games that don’t get this treatment, and the lootboxes are actual gambling.
I thought at the start it was a type of beurocratical problem, but it’s been too long.
did you just compare solitaire to gambling?
It’s as much related to gambling as Balatro is.
That would be the point, yes. Balatro has cards and chips, but chips are just there for keeping points. If Balatro is 18+ for gambling imagery, then so should Solitaire. That would be stupid, so Balatro shouldn’t get it, either.
I think the important note is it’s not just the cards in Balatro. Is it right? Not in my opinion. You have to admit tho, that it uses waaaaay more gambling imagery (you make antes for fuck’s sake)
Agreed, gambling doesn’t have to be for money or even anything tangibly real.
But it has to be for something. And in Balatro, there simply isn’t any gambling. You never wager anything to win anything based on that wager. All you have are points, and you can neither wager them, nor lose them in any way, chance-based or otherwise.
There is zero gambling in Balatro.
The term Ante in the game is used instead of “round” or “level”. It’s a measure of how far you’ve gotten. Each “ante” is made up of three “stakes”, point totals you need to beat in a set number of hands played and cards discarded.
There’s no aspect of choosing how much you risk, of “ante-ing up”, or how much you stake. You either beat the points goal (called “chips”) or you lose. There’s no playing of your hand against other hands, bluffing about how good your hand may be to convince others to fold, etc. It’s just you against the score goal. If you beat it faster than the amount of hands you’re given to work with you get extra rewards.
The game has no elements where you stake chips for rewards or anything like that. It borrows basic elements of scoring mechanics from poker, and uses a lot of poker terms for other purposes, but the closest part to gambling is the ability to buy random card packs between rounds (to customize your deck instead of just having the standard 52 card deck).
In between rounds you have access to buy various things to add further modifiers to your scoring, and to adjust the composition of your deck in order to make getting specific combinations more likely.
You can learn most of this in about 5 minutes with the demo, or by taking some time to watch someone else play on youtube.
Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (a common mechanic in roguelixe games, where going to a higher ascension/“stake” adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).
You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.
You should know that you’re talking about before drawing conclusions.
I haven’t played or watched Balataro but from the description on steam
Unless ante here is referring to something else it seems it does have them?
“Antes” are what Balatro calls its levels. Each level consists of 3 stages, which the game calls “blinds” (small/big/boss).
In poker, you don’t “beat” an ante, it’s part of what you bet. You also don’t “reach” blinds, nor is there such a thing as a “boss blind” in poker. And the word “bet” or any synonym should be pretty conspicuous by its absence in Balatro’s description. There is no gambling without betting/wagering, after all.
So yes, if you’re familiar with poker, that description should make it obvious that the words have different meanings in the game than they do in poker.
The only actual ‘mechanic’ that’s actually the same in Balatro as in poker is what comprises the different hands, and their relative value. And even then, there are also hands in Balatro that don’t exist in poker at all (five of a kind, flush house, etc.).
Firstly you could read user names before going off, I was simply asking a question that Im unwilling to buy the game to answer.
Do you know what gambling imagery entails? It doesn’t have to be how antes actually are used in poker for it to be gambling imagery.
A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery. It doesn’t even have to be anything more than a level in a casino.
Okay. Well, Balatro doesn’t do that–no gambling of any kind happens in the game.
So, what’s your point, exactly?
The game is literally made up of gambling imagery. From cards to chips to terms, the whole fuckin 9 yards. MY POINT IS ITS NOT GAMBLING, ITS GAMBLING IMAGERY.
I prefaced the whole fuckin statement I started with with saying it’s bullshit. DESPITE THAT BULLSHIT THE LABEL IS NOT INCORRECT. I hope you can stop being fucking obtuse and see my point after I’ve rephrased it multiple times.
It’s near the line, I agree, I see your point, but it’s just the terminology and no gambling mechanics. You don’t set the ante, you just play. They could change the name ante to level and it would be the same. It’s not like you look at your stuff and decide how much you’re willing to risk. (You could argue skipping blinds is this sort of risk analysis like gambling but that’s hardly unique to Balatro.) There is no benefit from stopping earlier because if you lose on ante one or lose on ante seven it’s the same outcome. Also, if you choose to restart one ante one or ante seven it’s the same outcome. Because it’s just a score keeping mechanism. Nothing more.
Not entirely sure about the European PEGI, but the American ESRB is funded by the same companies that it regulates. It was created after the outcry about violent games and was the industry self-regulating to avoid the government getting more involved.
It is a lobby group for the industry, for better and in this case very much for worse.
I assume PEGI is little different.
To clarify: the ESRB is the rating arm. The ESA that runs it? That’s the lobbying arm.
i got curious and looks like PEGI is somewhat similar at least. The ISFE is a self-regulating/co-regulating (w/e that means) body. There seem to be some kinda independent audits but… Looks like they don’t audit so good, if this article is evidence
That’s the whole issue with it being a lobby group. It makes them a ton of money, so they are incentivised against making a rating for it because that would draw more attention/limit sales.
And that’s where the whole government lobbying part comes in.
Right i was just clarifying what i learned about PEGIs setup, that it seems similar to the US’s ESRB. I’m a yank and didn’t know before looking either
In fairness, I would much rather that than governments directly controlling access, creating an additional form of direct censorship.
Not saying what we have now is great or anything though. I’m not exactly defending it.
Eeeeh, at least then there would theoretically be public accountability. The FCC has limited censorship power that they’re generally unobjectionable with.
I’m honestly more concerned with the censorship from private enterprises than with government consorship currently. Less accountability and less recourse.
It also really only becomes censorship if the rating system is used to prohibit speech. If we instead made it more like the nutritional guidelines on food it could instead give more of a content breakdown than setting an arbitrary age.
That’s basically why the ESRB was created, it was “Self-Regulate, or we’re just going to ban 80% of games on the market as a scapegoat for Columbine!”
Luigi Mangione played Among Us, an assassination game!
I largely agree, but the interests have gotten misaligned. Back then it was the threat of regulation which changed things up, I think the governments should do a little more of that.
PEGI and many other groups are private groups. They’re not an authority of any form. They’re not associated with government, public regulation, or public election. They’re a group of people that create their own standards outside of the ISO or any actual regulation representing the public.
Some countries do have actual public systems, but many just have these private groups that know best.
This is all well and true, but it’s important to note that these organizations exist as a sidestep to regulation, they are formed by industry insiders as a promise to the regulators that they will be honest about how they rate games (or movies or music) so that the government doesn’t actually get involved and do it’s job.
It’s a form of regulatory capture that allows the industry itself to decide what is harmful to us.
It’s basically the definition of conflict of interest.
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In Austria PEGI is “enforced” in Vienna while USK is “enforced” in Salzburg (and Germany, the reason why they buy all their games here). And PEGI might be shit, but USK is a million times worse.
USK rated Balatro with a minimum age of 12 because of “elements resembling gambling”. Sounds more reasonable to me than the PEGI rating.
German Authorities (technically not USK but USK is affiliated to them completely banned Wolfenstein, Dying Light, etc. Not 18+ or whatever it’s straight up illegal to promote or openly sell them in Germany.
I can kind of understand Wolfenstein, as Germany does seem to have this thing where they do and also don’t want to face their past.
But Dying light is a generic zombie game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MQ1ZMZ-l4
3 and older game.
Just right up front with the card pack gambling mechanic.
Gotta love how they saved the literal slot machine for a minute in to the video so it wouldn’t be too obvious.
When I was young I always wondered why the nhl games had a 16+ rating and Fifa had 3+. Figured both of them where ordinary sports.
Apparently fighting automatically shoots that nhl rating to the same level as GTA and balantro.