The rogue-like deck builder Balatro was only released at the end of February — and has already been withdrawn from sale in some countries, for reasons that are incomprehensible to the developer.
Balatro is a card game similar to poker, but with special cards that allow for increasingly powerful decks within runs. In just two weeks, the game has received over 12,000 ratings on Steam, with 97% of them being positive. However, the deck builder has been temporarily removed from console stores in some European countries, preventing new players from purchasing the game.
Why Was Balatro Removed From Stores?
On Twitter/X, publisher Playstack has announced that while current owners of the game Balatro can continue to play it, new console players will no longer be able to purchase the game. This is due to the Europe-wide age rating system for computer games, PEGI, unexpectedly raising Balatro's age rating from 3+ to 18+. The developers were not informed of this change beforehand.
PEGI justifies their decision by claiming that Balatro includes content that promotes gambling, despite the developers' efforts to distinguish it from gambling, as Playstack states:
Balatro was developed by someone who is staunchly anti-gambling, and painstaken care has been taken to ensure that the game does not feature gambling mechanics of any kind
In October, Balatro was rated 3+ by PEGI during internal talks. The unaltered content of the game makes the change in age rating disappointing. However, there is a possibility that PEGI will reverse the changes.
Balatro is still available in Germany, as well as outside of Europe, on Steam, and other PC stores.