Sorcerous cardgame Balatro and slot machine RPG Luck Be A Landlord have been reclassified as fit for people aged 12 years and over by the Pan European Games Information board, after they were initially slapped with an 18 rating for “glamorising… the simulation of gambling”.

PEGI have made the change following a successful appeal against the 18 rating by Balatro’s European publisher Sold Out and Luck Be A Landlord’s Switch publisher Fangamer. They’re also going to develop “a more granular set of classification criteria” for games that reference gambling, to distinguish jingling parodies of rentier capitalism from the one arm bandits found in actual casinos.

To catch you up, Balatro was pulled from certain digital stores in March last year after it was recategorised as an 18+ game. In a statement, the publishers attributed this to an unspecified rating’s board “mistaken belief that the game ‘contains prominent gambling imagery and materials that instructs about gambling'”. In comments on Reddit shortly after, the game’s developer Localthunk confirmed that the ratings board in question was PEGI. “I still believe that the rating is unwarranted, but there is some grey area for interpretation from PEGI and at this point it is what it is,” he wrote. “I think the one thing I am most disappointed by is the fact that other games with actual gambling mechanics aren’t rated the same way because of their appearance/theme.”

Luck Be A Landlord, meanwhile, was banned from Google Play in 13 countries in August 2023 after the game was found to be in violation of the platform’s policies about gambling. In January this year, Google threatened to ban the game globally unless developers TrampolineTales updated its listing to specify that it “contains gambling”.

All of which may seem ridiculous if you’ve played either game. To draw some basic distinctions, Balatro features poker cards and poker-style mechanics, but does not involve the waging of real money, and is fundamentally a deckbuilding roguelike featuring Tarot cards and bizarre Joker modifiers. Luck Be A Landlord, meanwhile, uses a slot machine format for the purposes of satire, and again doesn’t involve the waging of real money.

I can, however, see the case for being suspicious of either game, both because there are superficial correspondences with casino machines and so forth, and because video game reward and randomisation systems at large have a certain kinship with gambling. Games like EA’s football trading card sim Ultimate Team thrive on microtransaction and lootbox mechanics that may lead to addiction, but you don’t have to be pouring in hard cash to get hooked.

PEGI now agree with the criticism of each game’s 18 rating. Regarding Balatro, the complaints board have “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.” As for Luck Be A Landlord, they’ve similarly reasoned that “although the game features a slot machine mechanic, there were no specific transferable gambling skills and the game can therefore be rated PEGI 12.”

They’re also planning to revise their rating system a little to make finer distinctions between, say, games that depict poker and games in which you actually play poker for cash rewards. “The PEGI system continuously evolves in line with cultural expectations and the guidance of independent experts who support our assessment process,” the statement continues. “PEGI strives to apply ratings criteria fairly, consistently, and transparently to ensure that audiences understand the type of content that is present in games.

“At this moment, any teaching or glamorisation of simulated gambling automatically leads to a PEGI 18 rating,” it goes on. “On the basis of these appeals, the PEGI Experts Group will develop a more granular set of classification criteria to handle gambling themes and the simulation, teaching and glamorisation of gambling in different age categories, which will now include 12 but also keep 18 as an age category for games that simulate gambling typically played in casinos and betting halls.”

I like that Balatro and Luck Be A Landlord are no longer being filed alongside the sweaty fruit machines that line the toilet queue at Weatherspoons. That said, I am naturally a little wary of the possibility that PEGI might compromise too much with companies who attempt to split hairs between “simulation, teaching and glamorisation”. As Nic put it in Slack just now, it’s easy to imagine less scrupulous publishers “trying to ludonarrative the fuck out of their lootboxes” and piling on “mitigating” elements so as to get their gambling experiences into the hands of kiddies. I’m interested to read a breakdown of PEGI’s new criteria, once they’ve finalised it.