Balatro is comfortably one of 2024's best games. It ranked second in my personal top ten of the year and the same for TheGamer's game of the year top ten.
The game has been undergoing somewhat of a resurgence since The Game Awards, where it was nominated for five awards, picking up three but missing out on the top prize to Astro Bot. Every day since the early December event, Balatro's player count has increased on Steam, starting at around 14,000 and rising to over 37,000 on Boxing Day.
The secret is to make it sound so boring they don't want to steal your phone to play it.
Unfortunately, however, the game fell agonizingly short of breaking its concurrent player record, with only around 250 players needed to beat it.
Balatro peaked at 37,737 players on February 28 this year, around a week after it launched. Yesterday, despite calls from Balatro's PR maestro Wout, Balatro fell just short of beating that record, with, according to SteamCharts, 37,493 players jumping into the game at the same time—only 244 away from breaking the record.
The increase in player count is likely due to the attention it received at Geoff Keighley's yearly...
