Indie Phenomenon Balatro Passes Another Impressive Sales Milestone

Ace in the hole

by Khayl Adam 8am

Roguelike poker revolution Balatro has passed another major sales milestone, with 3.5 million copies sold. The surprise hit has come an extremely long way since initially being removed from the PS Store following a PEGI rating dispute.

Indie underdog stories are some of our favourites, and solo developer and artist LocalThunk certainly fits the bill. Hailing from Canada, surprisingly little is known about the creator outside of a few interviews and a Reddit AMA (we can also assume he is now very rich). That is somewhat unusual, especially considering there is a better than 0% Balatro brings home Game of the Year at Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards, up against heavy hitters like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

Do you see the Balatro train slowing down anytime soon? What are the odds the plucky little take on traditional card games is hailed Game of the Year 2024? Place your bets in the comments section below.

[source x.com]

Khayl Adam is Push Square's roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.

Fantastic, the kind of news we should see more of in the industry. Hopefully their talent flourishes from here onwards with a firm financial foundation.

I would like it to win GOTY but I highly doubt it. Amazing game even though very frustrating a lot of the time 😂
Well done LocalThunk! 👏

3
Dom_31
8:35am

I wouldn't name it my game of the year but after kind of..scoffing at the thought of a flippin' poker rogue like being in the running for the award before I gave it a shot...
Yeah. I can see why it's this successful and how it got so much praise. The game is damn great as a little time waster if you got five-ten minutes to kill.

And even for an hour long session in the evening, admittedly 😅
Kind of nice to wind down with after work.

Much like with Vampire Survivors I’m actually loathe to start this game. With my backlog, the last thing I need is some two-dollar indie to absolutely takeover my life. I’ll probably end up caving (on both) eventually though unfortunately 😅

Not a fans of Poker and possibly never play this game. But hey, it's nice to see another indie devs did something different and doing well.

6
CJD87
9:15am

Delighted for the team behind this...!

Balatro is my personal GOTY, and I'm thrilled to see it nominated for the 'big league' award later (not just relegated to the Indie nominations)

I don't suspect it will win out, especially with stiff competition from Astro & Rebirth, but am hopeful in that the exposure and nomination itself will yield increased interest/sales for Balatro.

Still unsure how I feel about Erdtree being in the mix, and the rule changing/bending/breaking to accomodate this (!)......However, these awards are generally a pretty fun time, and enjoyable as long as theyre not taken too seriously.

I hope Geoff continues this each year, genuinely look forward to it.

7
bowzoid
9:41am

Balatro should be taught at school

8
themightyant
11:40am

I love the story of the making of this game too, that a solo dev developed it to better his craft and launched it to put on his resume. Now 3.5 million. Life changing, guess he doesn't need that resume.

@PuppetMaster It's not poker, you just play poker hands to score. (And if you get the right jokers for your build, you might not even have to do that.) Give it a shot, it's fantastic.

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