We've collectively spent 11,000 years playing Balatro, fans reply it's gotta be more than that

An image of a card from Balatro denoting its 1 million sales.

(Image credit: LocalThunk / Playstack)

What do the domestication of rice, the Bronze Age collapse, the founding (and sacking) of Rome, the American Revolution, and the Moon landing have in common? That's right: You could fit every single one of them into the time we've all spent playing dangerously moreish deckbuilder Balatro and have a few millennia left to spare.

So says the game's creator, LocalThunk, in a post over on X, "The Everything App." "Balatro has been cumulatively played for over 11,000 years across all platforms," wrote Mssr Thunk in a post that should maybe have prompted some self-reflection on our part but which only sparked pride.

Balatro has been cumulatively played for over 11,000 years across all platforms 🍌October 8, 2024

"I think you're only counting my hours," wrote one fan. "I've done at least a thousand of those I suspect," wrote another. Others just worry that their bosses will find out about the time they've spent playing. Can't relate, personally. One of the upsides of working in videogame media is that I'm reasonably certain my bosses comprise a sizable amount of those 11,000 years all by themselves.

And why wouldn't they? Balatro is—if you couldn't tell by the civilisational amount of time we've all put into it—a very good game indeed. It's the deckbuilder for people who don't get into deckbuilders, the poker game for people who don't know a royal flush from a two pair, and a game you can easily fire up and play whether you have five minutes or five hours.

In our Balatro review, Abbie Stone scored the game 91% and praised it as an "eerily beautiful" and utterly hypnotic game that will pull hours and hours out of you as you play hand after hand. Plus, it's on phones now, which makes it such a looming threat to global productivity I'm reasonably sure the Fed will have to step in. 11,000 years? I gotta be honest: I reckon that's a drop in the bucket compared to the time we'll have spent on this thing by the time all is said and done.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.