Game That Inspired Balatro Gets Erroneously Censored By Google

forward Balatero have Lucky to be a landlorda roguelike deck-building game about manipulating slot machines to pay rent amid a cost-of-living crisis that spirals out of control. Despite the aesthetics of gambling, no part of the game actually involves gambling money, whether real or virtual. But that didn’t stop Google from trying to retroactively pull it from the mobile app store over age rating issues.

“Happy New Year everyone! With just three hours until 2025, I received an email from Google Play Support with the following subject line: Action Required: Your app does not comply with Google Play policies (lucky landlords),” Developer TrampolineTales announced on January 1. “In the past few months, my luck in Landlord has not changed at all, but for some unknown reason, my game now ‘includes gambling’!”

The creator writes that this has This has been a problem in other countries beforeat this point they have no choice but to endorse Google’s faulty logic in order to keep It’s a blessing to be a landlord Sold on Android devices. TrampolineTales wrote: “I sincerely believe that Luck be a Landlord deserves the equivalent of an E10+ rating in all regions, but for now I have given up and will address any inaccurate ratings in the game.”

They continued, “I have now filled out the Google Play Age Rating Questionnaire to ‘agree’ that my game ‘contains gambling.’ I am doing this to prevent my game from being globally banned on Google Play because every time I When trying to appeal these decisions I was simply sent screenshots of my game and told “this is gambling”.

Balaterowhich was largely inspired by It’s a blessing to be a landlord and replaced the slot machine mechanics with poker-based gameplay, which faced similar issues last year. Gambling links get it first Temporarily banned from Nintendo Switch eShop and later led to PEGI’s 18+ age rating is wrong in Europe. It’s unclear how much of this recurring problem is due to the people responsible for ratings not knowing how the game works, or being so overworked that they don’t actually have time to pay attention to their ratings.

The false association with gambling is particularly harmful considering that many games on the Mobile Store do have very obvious gambling mechanics, including those that you can buy for real money. EA Sports FC Mobile Edition Copied its console version’s card pack opening chance, even Pokémon TCG Pocket Let players spend money to speed up the opening of booster packs, and it all depends on your chance of getting new rare cards or duplicate cards you already own. These games, as well as many role-playing games with gacha character collection mechanics, are rated E (suitable for everyone).

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