Before Balatro there was Happiness be a landlorda rogue deck builder who rigs a slot machine to try to pay rent in the midst of a cost of living crisis spiraling ever further out of control. Despite the gambling aesthetic, there is no part of the game that actually involves playing with money, be it real or virtual. However, this hasn't stopped Google from retroactively removing the app from the mobile app store due to age rating concerns.
“Happy New Year everyone! Just three hours into 2025, I received an email from Google Play Support with the following subject line: Action Required: Your app does not comply with Google Play policies (Lucky Be a Landlord).” developer TrampolineTales announced on January 1st. “Nothing has changed in Luck be a Landlord in the last few months, but for some reason my game now has 'gambling' in it!”
The creator wrote that this is the case has already been a problem in several other countriesand they have no choice at this point but to support Google's flawed logic in order to maintain Happiness be a landlord for sale on Android devices. “I truly believe that Luck be a Landlord deserves the equivalent of an E10+ rating in all regions, but at this point I have simply given up and will address the inaccurate rating foisted on the game,” wrote TrampolineTales.
They continued: “I have now completed the Google Play age rating questionnaire to 'agree' that my game 'contains gambling.'” I am doing this to prevent my game from being banned from Google Play worldwide, as every time I tried to appeal these decisions all I was sent was a screenshot of my game and told it was gambling. ”
Balatrowhich is heavily inspired by Happiness be a landlord and replaced the slot machine mechanics with poker-based gameplay, had similar problems last year. It first understood the association with gambling briefly banned from the Nintendo Switch eShop and later led to one Wrong age rating 18+ from PEGI in Europe. It's unclear to what extent this recurring problem is due to the people responsible for reviews not knowing how games work, or because they are so overworked that they don't have time to really devote time to reviewing.
The erroneous association with gambling is particularly harmful when you consider that there are many games on mobile stores that have very obvious gambling mechanics, including those that allow you to spend real money. EA Sports FC Mobile reproduces the card pack opening probabilities of its console counterpart and even Pokémon Trading Card Game Bag allows players to spend money to speed up the opening of booster packs. It depends on chance whether you get new rare cards or duplicates of the cards you already own. These, as well as many RPGs with gacha-based character collecting mechanics, are all rated E for Everyone.
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