You've probably been pronouncing Balatro wrong all along, but 'it's kind of a gif/jif situation'

Balatro wasn't just PC Gamer's game of the year 2024: pretty much every developer seems hooked on it (including Swen Vincke). But unfortunately things have now taken a distressing turn.

There's an official way to pronounce Balatro, and it's not what I thought. I say Ba-lah-tro and so do most members of the PCG team. But Stephen Totilo over at Game File recently put the question to Naman Budhwar, head of marketing at the game's publisher Playstack, and he says otherwise.

"BAH-luh-trow is how LocalThunk says it," says Budhwar. "But it’s kind of a 'gif / jif' situation, where he doesn’t really mind how people say it.

"So people can say 'ba-LAH-tro', they can say 'BAH-la-tro', but we decided to go with his pronunciation."

Totilo jokes about saying "BAY-la-tro" and Budhwar says "sure yeah", rock on.

Totilo has a short audio clip where you can hear this abomination in full, and it can also be heard in the game's very first trailer.

My disappointment is immeasurable, my day is ruined, and for some reason I keep thinking of that time John Romero said "gib" was pronounced with a soft "g".

Developer LocalThunk's been on a well-deserved victory lap recently, sharing the full timeline of the game's development along with various other tidbits (such as when he resumed development because he couldn't play Rocket League). Oh, and the time they released a demo of the game where the full version could be unlocked in Notepad.