Roguelike deck builder Balatro reaches over 5 million sales

Popular deck builder game Balatro reaches the five million mark leaving the developer behind the game thanking everyone and asking them to try more indie games.

22 Jan 2025 14:53 IST

Updated On 22 Jan 2025 16:12 IST

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Indie Game of the Year for 2024, Balatro has now crossed five million unit sales. The poker-based roguelike deck builder was one of the hottest game releases in 2024 which quickly climbed up the popularity rank. The game was even contending for Game of the Year alongside Astro Bot and Black Myth Wukong.

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The game was made by a solo developer going by the name ‘LocalThunk’ who was recently looking for a trophy shelf for all the awards Balatro won. The Game Awards nomination also seemingly gave a boost to the sales. Before the award show, LocalThunk revealed that the game has reached over 3.5 million sales, that’s over 1.5 million sales within a few months which is quite impressive for an indie title.

The stats were already quite impressive with play time reaching over 11,000 years. Since the game is roguelike, each run is different as players have to make do with the hands they are dealt with due to the randomness. However, that does not mean they are helpless.

Another reason why the game became so popular is due to how accessible it was for everyone. Balatro is available across all platforms including consoles, PC, and mobile. Breaking the news on social media, the official Balatro account thanked everyone who played the game.

Also Read:Balatro creator looking for a trophy shelf following The Game Awards results

Balatro dev encourages people to support indie games

Along with his thanks the developer also asked players to pick up other indie games, especially if this was the first time they were playing one. The last few years saw more and more players leaning either toward indie games or older games compared to modern AAA releases.

The last few weeks have been pretty wild.

To everyone who picked up Balatro after seeing it at @thegameawards, we hope you're having an amazing time with it!

If this is your first time picking up an indie title, try to make it a habit!

There's some amazing stuff out there! pic.twitter.com/ZnRpWnJlTW
— Balatro (@BalatroGame) January 21, 2025

This was due to some incredibly original ideas compared to the same old rinse and repeat. The biggest pushback in 2024 came against live-service games or always online games, even if they are meant to be played in single-player mode.