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Balatro-focused YouTube channel Balatro University has shared a video describing their personal experience with YouTube age restricting videos about the game, with the given reason being its alleged depiction of gambling. Balatro creator LocalThunk has even commented on the situation, frustrated by the continued mischaracterization of his game.
On March 19th, YouTube instituted a TOS change for creators, with “depictions or promotions of online casino sites or apps” now liable to be age-restricted. That’s a fairly common-sense change, but Balatro U (go fightin’ Jokers!) and other Balatro-focused channels have found themselves caught in the crossfire.
Crucially, age restriction is a bit of a death sentence for a video, severely limiting its potential to be recommended to viewers via YouTube’s algorithm. A recurring problem on the platform is creators having perfectly innocuous videos age-restricted, seemingly for no reason and with little recourse for appeal. Popular speedrunning historian Summoning Salt ran into just such a situation with a video about Mega Man.
The particularly maddening thing here is that Balatro is not an “online casino site or app,” and characterizing it as one is an act of almost willful ignorance. It’s no more or less a game of chance than other deck builders, and I’d wager the issue is Balatro’s use of the standard 52-card deck and playful evocation of casino kitsch getting caught up in some algorithmic content moderation dragnet.
It’s the same struggle that Balatro had with European ratings board PEGI, which had insisted on slapping Balatro with an 18+ classification before finally relenting in February. But the heavily automated black box of YouTube makes a similarly happy ending in this situation much less likely.
Balatro University criticized the uneven application of the new rules on Balatro content, with only a sixth of their videos getting age-restricted. They also explained the Kafkaesque runaround of trying to appeal an age restriction, and how it seems impossible to talk to an actual person and get a clear, personalized answer at any point in the process.
Balatro creator LocalThunk has even weighed in on Bluesky, understandably annoyed that this just keeps happening. “Good thing we are protecting children from knowing what a four of a kind is and letting them watch CS case opening videos instead,” he wrote, referencing the gambling-adjacent mini economy around Counter-Strike weapon skins.
As one of those geriatric millennials exposed to the rough and tumble, aughts internet at too early an age, I’m probably the wrong guy to comment on this, but a new wave of draconian, ham-fisted “won’t somebody think of the children” content moderation increasingly looks like a real threat to an open, usable internet. See also the proliferation of ID verification laws in right wing-controlled states in the US.
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Kurt Indovina
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