In under a month, solo-developed instant-classic roguelike Balatro has sold 1 million copies, will soon destroy global productivity with mobile release

News
By Hope Bellingham
published

Get ready to lose even more of your time

Balatro
(Image credit: Playstack)

The instant classic roguelike Balatro has sold 1 million copies in a month, and the recently confirmed mobile port hasn't even been released. 

On March 18, the official Balatro Twitter account shared some good news with fans. "This morning Balatro hit a momentous milestone...ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD!" the tweet reads. "We still have some fun things planned for the future, but for now…" the post continues, along with a GIF of playing cards spelling out 'Thanks a million!'

It's been a pretty eventful first month for the roguelike deck builder. After launching on February 20, 2024, Balatro very quickly managed to sell over 500,000 copies in just 10 days and become one of the highest-rated Steam games of all time, beating the peak player count of its greatest roguelike rival Slay the Spire - which the developer has never played as a way to intentionally "cut myself off" from roguelikes to create the best game possible.

This success is impressive already, but things may be about to step up as developer LocalThunk reveals they're working on bringing Balatro to mobile. You can play the card game on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This is already covering a lot of ground, but an iOS and Android version is also in the works, and is sure to captivate even more people who want to play on the go.

In a Reddit AMA, LocalThunk revealed: "We are currently working on the mobile version, yes. If we have any new announcement around this we'll post it on our Discord and Twitter." Elsewhere in the AMA, the topic of a physical edition of the game also came up. "We are still looking into it at the moment," the dev replied, before telling fans to stay tuned for updates. 

Although Balatro has seen a lot of success in a month - interestingly, its developer only realized "the day before launch" that they might have a hit on their hand - it's also dealt with its fair share of difficulties. Not long after Launch, the game was accused of pushing gambling and removed from stores. LocalThunk and publisher Playstack then had to change the game's age rating despite it not actually featuring any gambling components.

Check out our interview with LocalThunk: Exploring Balatro's hype, its ingenious twists on poker, and its mysterious creator.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.  

See comments