Balatro lands additional crossovers as PEGI lowers age rating

Balatro seemingly can’t stop scoring victories. The indie hit from developer LocalThunk revealed another round of cosmetic content packed with prestigious crossovers ranging from Assassin’s Creed to Rust. The Friends of Jimbo (Pack 4) DLC brings another eight sets of card flavor to the poker-inspired roguelike deck-builder — and does so completely for free.

Ubisoft’s massive Assassin’s Creed series and acclaimed indie horror title Slay the Princess are providing the motifs for new Spades flavors, while Hearts can be decorated with characters from popular Dungeons & Dragons show Critical Role and indie adventure Bugsnax.

Things are getting a little darker with Clubs, as their motifs stem from co-op survival game Dead by Daylight and the legendary Fallout series. The visuals for Diamonds are courtesy of Rust, the massive survival-crafting game, and newly released turn-based strategy epic Civilization 7.

The Friends of Jimbo (Pack 4) free-LC is now available in all versions of Balatro.

That’s not the only piece of good news coming from LocalThunk, though. European rating board PEGI, which previously increased Balatro’s age rating to being suitable for adults only due to its use of poker imagery and terminology, has finally decided to bring the game’s rating down to a PEGI 12 — a much more reasonable rating than PEGI 18 for Balatro’s actual content.

“The PEGI 18 rating for the game ‘Balatro‘ has been changed to a PEGI 12 following a successful appeal submitted by publisher Sold Out Sales & Marketing,” the board explained. “The Complaints Board concluded that, although the game explains the various hands of poker, the roguelike deck-building game contained mitigating fantastical elements that warranted a PEGI 12 rating.”

PEGI also announced that it wants to “develop a more granular set of classification criteria to handle gambling themes and the simulation, teaching and glamorisation of gambling in different age categories” as a result of the Balatro controversy.

Balatro crossed the threshold of five million sales earlier this year. Released in February 2024, the title won three trophies at The Game Awards and will receive a major content update at some point in 2025.