Balatro's creator LocalThunk wasn't expecting his hit roguelike to be an instant success or a slow-burning sleeper hit, but to his surprise, the game made him more money in its first few hours alone than he had seen in his entire life.
LocalThunk's decided to give us all a full timeline behind the creation and release of the poker-themed game that's made everyone's toilet breaks that much more enjoyable. But while looking back on launch day, the developer delves into how quickly he realized his life had changed.
"To my shock - nothing goes wrong," he writes in the new blog. "People love the game, they're having a great time. I think there may have been some small bugs but definitely nothing massive, nothing like what I was anticipating. Streamers are playing it, media is writing about it. I have so many texts from friends and family. It is the most surreal day of my life."
All the attention caused the game to absolutely surge, fuelling a launch "10-20 times larger than we were anticipating." LocalThunk recalls that he refreshed the Steam page's sales data after the first few hours, not expecting to see anything of note, but it had already sold 50,000 copies on the platform. "The numbers on that page made no sense," he continued. "This was meant for just a few of my friends and yet somehow all these strangers chose to buy it. The revenue on that page after just a couple hours was over $600,000, far more money than I've made in my entire life. By the end of launch day, Balatro has sold 119,000 units on Steam alone."
Balatro had also launched on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on the very same day, so the Steam sales data didn't even paint a full picture.
And the game's only rocketed to new heights since then. Nominated for game of the year at The Game Awards, five million copies sold and counting, and collaborations with massive series like Fallout and Assassin's Creed - and that's all happened within Balatro's first year.
For more games like Balatro, check out our picks of the best roguelikes you can play right now.
