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The Latest Breaking News from Balatro

"LocalThunk is really rich now": 2 weeks after winning yet another GOTY award, Balatro sends Final Fantasy 16 star to accept award in "suspiciously arousing" Jimbo attire

"This is weird isn't it?"

GamesRadar

Balatro creator LocalThunk is throwing his weight around to make sure Blue Prince gets some love at The Game Awards: 'Geoff my man I better see Blue Prince as a GOTY nominee'

Blue Prince is really good, and LocalThunk wants to make sure everyone knows about it.

PC Gamer

Wildly successful Balatro publisher says more indie devs need funding "that isn't based on making a ridiculous amount of money back"

Balatro recently crossed 5 million units sold

GamesRadar

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YouTube is conducting a 'platform-wide review' after mistakenly hitting Balatro videos with an age restriction for gambling content

"Videos featuring Balatro gameplay should not be age-restricted."

PC Gamer

Balatro's creator has reached poker zen after beating every deck on every difficulty: 'All this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it'

I have no enemies.

PC Gamer

First PEGI, now YouTube - Balatro's LocalThunk seems tired of his roguelike game being age restricted for gambling-related concerns

"Good thing we are protecting children from knowing what a 4 of a kind is"

GamesRadar

YouTube has started age restricting Balatro videos for alleged gambling-related content, and creator LocalThunk is clearly getting sick of this sort of thing

"Good thing we are protecting children from knowing what a 4 of a kind is and letting them watch CS case opening videos instead."

PC Gamer

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'You must have played this before!': Balatro's creator impressed bystanders with his Balatro skills at GDC, and nobody knew who he was

Like a king moving anonymously amongst his subjects.

PC Gamer

Balatro creator LocalThunk stays so anonymous, a GDC attendee couldn't believe how he "crushed" the roguelike's base difficulty: "'Wow you must have played this before!'"

"I guess you could say that"

GamesRadar

You've probably been pronouncing Balatro wrong all along, but 'it's kind of a gif/jif situation'

You say tomato, I say Balatro.

PC Gamer

League of Legends' take on Balatro is one of its best mini-games yet – and it's also exactly what's wrong with this era of League of Legends

The Demon's Hand is great - but doomed

GamesRadar

Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke says indie poker roguelike Balatro was his 2024 GOTY, beating out Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Astro Bot, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Balatro racks up yet another accolade

GamesRadar

Biggest announcements from the Game Developers Conference 2025

From Helldivers devs potentially speaking at the UN to Netflix's first MMO to a new, industry-encompassing union

GamesRadar

Even Balatro's publisher doesn't know when LocalThunk will be done with 1.1: "Maybe I should whisper in his ear, like, 'So how's those 200 new jokers coming?'"

"I may hear it a couple days before everyone else"

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PC Gamer

'He's just gonna show up one day and say, here's 100 new jokers:' Balatro's publisher doesn't know how big the 1.1 update will be or when it's coming

"I don't think he'll let us know when [Balatro 1.1] is gonna drop," said Wout van Halderen, the communications director at Playstack.

GamesRadar

"Balatro was a pain in the ass to market," but it started getting better once players started cracking open the demo so they could play forever

Publisher Playstack "knew it was so good because we couldn't stop playing it internally"

PC Gamer

Balatro's LocalThunk isn't 'trying to pull a Banksy', he just 'wanted to be left alone to make his game'

According to his publisher, LocalThunk’s anonymity is less about artsy obfuscation and more about minding his own business.

GamesRadar

Balatro's first big update is still on track for 2025, but it'll be "done when it's done, because it's got to be good before it's fast"

The poker roguelike's first major gameplay update is still on track

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GamesRadar

When starting development on his hit roguelike, Balatro creator set out to recreate a made-up card game he played "thousands" of times with his friends

It "had some pretty wacky rules and a lot of bluffing"

PC Gamer

LocalThunk forbids AI-generated art on the Balatro subreddit: 'I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds'

A recent kerfuffle over AI art forced the Balatro creator to get involved.

GamesRadar

Balatro creator hits back at AI art spread on the roguelike's subreddit: "I don't use it in my game, I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds"

Localthunk lands on the anti side of the AI art fence

GamesRadar

After stepping away from Balatro for 3 months, the developer only resumed work "because I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League"

Breaks are important

GamesRadar

Balatro creator started "properly playing the game myself about a week before launch" and had "a pretty emotional moment" where he realized it's "actually fun"

Well, of course

GamesRadar

Balatro creator initially considered a Steam release in part to help "get a game developer job somewhere," and after 5 million sales I'd say he found one

"All I knew about Steam is that there were about a million games on there and that very few could realistically make a living"

GamesRadar

From "I stopped working on the project entirely" to "we are so back," Balatro creator says the roguelike's development was always about passion and taking breaks was essential

The momentum from this break led the developer to consider publicly releasing a game for the first time

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