Clown emojis all around
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
To clarify: the ESRB is the rating arm. The ESA that runs it? That’s the lobbying arm.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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)
You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.
You should know that you’re talking about before drawing conclusions.
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.
A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery.
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.
I haven’t played or watched Balataro but from the description on steam
You’re going to need every edge you can get in order to reach the boss blind, beat the final ante and secure victory.
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.
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).
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.
He probably forgot to funnel millions of dollars to non-profits and businesses adjacent to PEGI decisionmakers and their family members. Rookie mistake.
They haven’t understood the game at all, I wonder if they even looked at it for more than two minutes
Run game > see playing cards and poker chips > close > PEGI 18
They’re not looking into blatant gambling in AAA titles, of course they won’t take a closer look into an indie game. They’re completely useless.
Ah, but there are also tarot cards, which is spooky Occult voodoo magic. Balatro backwards might spell “Satan is Lord” in some ancient druidic script.
Praise Otralab!
It can’t be that easy. PEGI says that games containing gambling (real money or not) are rated with PEGI 12 to 18. So there must be something else to the game that led to this rating.
or…you know… they’re just morons.
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.
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.
Reminds me of that Australian law that was proposed to make anything with a relation to casino games Restricted 18 but merely mature for exploitative slot machine loot box mechanics.
I haven’t seen Loot Boxes in a game in awhile, I kinda prefer those to FOMO…
I think the perfect system is you earn Loot Boxes by playing that can contain anything, but you can buy the specific things you want at any time, the boxes themselves are unlocked through gameplay.
Heroes of the Storm did this, and god I miss that game.
I wish DBD did it
Sounds about right. I’d seen “slot machines” (we call em poker machines or “the pokies”) more times than I can remember before I was 18.
“the pokies”
You ever Google that?
No, why?
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.
NBA 2K literally had slot machine in it. System is corrupt.
I’m hopelessly addicted to gatcha. When I saw this I bought Balatro.
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.
Wait, wasn’t this already an issue a while back and wasn’t that resolved?
It was banned by a few countries for looking like a gambling game which was a separate thing, now it’s just rated as an adult game by PEGI.
Right - I was thinking of the brief store pull.
But I thought that got resolved with the game getting the 18+ PEGI rating back in March already?
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/03/balatro-back-on-switch-eshop-in-europe-with-new-age-rating
Or was it like a provisional rating?
Steer clear of clowns emojis, bub.
I would give proprietary software 18+ rating too, nobody know what’s inside.
Why should we care what a talking horse pseudo-plinco game thinks should be the age rating of their competitors?
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.
It’s a good question
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
No, rouge is the stuff that ladies put on their cheeks. You mean rogue, as in wildcard, untameable, privateer.
Yes thank you
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.
