Balatro has crossed a major milestone, selling 5 million copies in its first year. The news was shared on X and featured a shout out to The Game Awards.
“To everyone who picked up Balatro after seeing it at @thegameawards, we hope you’re having an amazing time with it!” the post read. Balatro was featured prominently during The Game Awards, nominated for a number of awards including Game of the Year and winning the best indie, best debut indie, and best mobile categories.
On X, Wout van Halderen, PR manager for Balatro publisher Playstack, added that the game had sold 3.5 million copies by the first week of December. With The Game Awards taking place the second week in December, the implication is that Balatro received a significant 1.5 million unit bump in sales after being featured during Keighley’s Christmas Commercial telethon. Even more impressive, the 5 million figure is total units sold and doesn’t count the number of downloads the game got for being on the Apple Arcade subscription.
Since its launch in February, Balatro has quickly become one of the biggest indie hits of 2024. Developed by a single person over the course of two years, the poker roguelike has garnered a reputation for being a well-crafted “number-go-up” game with its developer leaning in on the joke that it devours players’ free and not-so-free time.
In the 11 months since the game’s release, it’s only gotten small, cosmetic updates but developer LocalThunk has hinted a major gameplay-focused update is forthcoming this year.
Jimbo help us all.