Balatro This was practically ready weeks ago, but @Ko-Ko wanted to gain the permission of the original developers. I don't know what's happened next, leaving the final words to Ko-Ko himself, but he released a video about it, making it public, hence here we are!
Re: Balatro What is this Balatro thingy, anyway? Looks to me like a game loosely fashioned after Poker with some ezo-crud on top. Did I get that right?
Re: Balatro For us (Plus/4 sceners), all that matters is that it's a new game. Yay!
Otherwise it's so hard not to say "Google is your friend" It's one of the (perhaps the) most successful indie games of 2024. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews and recipient of many awards and nominations. A short, concise review would be "Balatro's ingenious combination of poker and roguelite gameplay creates an intoxicating combination that's hard to pull away from".
Re: Balatro Thanks. New game for our machines? Of course yay! Or double yay! Or even triple yay! Cool new games are always welcome. But Balatro? IDK, man. Looks like not my cup of tea.
Re: Balatro Unfortunately, that's the truth: Playstack delivered a takedown / cease&desist mail to @Ko-Ko. Unfortunately, the hyper active crackscene on C64 had already released all the three main previews of the game. The last of the series, V0.955, featuring the SID music by Jammer, has been published hours ago, but now the Blazon group has decided to remove it, whereas the older releases by Hokuto Force and Preview Release Group still stand.
Probably, if Ko-Ko would have cloned Balatro, changing logos, references and maybe triggered the rules a bit (not the graphics, come on, those are the usual playing card we all play with!) nobody would have felt "moved" in his own rights. But if I try to read the core spirit of his deed, I figure out a sort of celebration for their beloved creature, in a choice which doesn't damage their economy or copyrights at all. So, I can understand why Ko-Ko did his moves on it.
Re: Balatro He's been trying to contact the original's publishers from the beginning. Of course I'm not a lawyer, but the only thing they can claim copyright over is the name, which is easy enough to change. Game rules and ideas cannot be copyrighted (hence all the cheap mobile game clones of literally every game).
This is a lame move from the publishers, big thumbs down from me.
Same for the C64 crack scene. I don't know who you can even call something a "crack", when the previews he published don't have protection. Taking someone else's hard work, slapping a crappy, tired looking, re-used intro on it is the epitome of lameness. They should be ashamed.
Re: Balatro @Csabo basically it usually works like you've already described, but I think that into certain bounds, changing a title is not enough, and we had some veeery on-topic past case studies about that, even since 1987: the Katakis/Denaris and the Giana Sisters precedents. Plus, we also have ancient stories of sued programmers in the Atari golden era, and so many others nowadays from the 5th generation consoles and forward.
Said that, as I wrote in the previous text, Playstack shot their own feet with this miserable and grotesque request. They probably tested their power to shield their products against a dummy enemy. Certainly, no one with an healthy mind could wonder stuff like "Oh if they're gonna to play the PETSCII version, they won't buy the original on Steam and GoG!"
About the C64 crackers: well, you've probably met my comment under the release of the Preview 3 by Blazon, so you know how I was a tad scandalised by the hungry need to release something which is unavailable yet.
Nonetheless, I must point out that the meaning of "crack" got pushed beyond the strict meaning of "unlocking a protection" since the '80s: passing thru any possible protection is only one of the many "services" which allow to completely exploit the game, and fully expose it to show all its potential.
You are probably all aware of the scoring system to be assigned to the aforementioned individual characteristics added to a crack, in order to feed "The List", the great ranking that has been updated for more than thirty years now, aimed at rewarding the best cracking groups, who compete for time and quality to climb position after position year after year. On the other hand, the presence of crackers who were responsible for examining the games, fixing them, saving them, finding them if lost, reconstructing them if never completed, is undoubtedly a resource of constructiveness in the Scene.
Half way of these two visions, there it lies the ethic of the Cracker, between the river of the hasty and amoral rush to crack just to get there before others, and the river of positive motivations that lead him to take care of the fruit of the programming made by others before him.
You know that for a few years I have imported both the practice and the lexicon of the cracking scene onto our shores, in some way sponsoring and encouraging it. Maybe even too much, which sometimes triggers justified irony from, for example, @Chronos Well, all those cracks have been released to respond directly to a specific need: repair a level, publish a first perfectly functional crack that was previously missing, add new commands to be able to play it well, improve the graphics consistently, and so on.
None of them are purely unrealistic (at least, I hope so, and I tried to), and this is my personal vision of cracking scene, according to the standards that I consider consistent with it.
Balatro
It's one of the (perhaps the) most successful indie games of 2024. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews and recipient of many awards and nominations. A short, concise review would be "Balatro's ingenious combination of poker and roguelite gameplay creates an intoxicating combination that's hard to pull away from".
Or double yay! Or even triple yay! 
But Balatro? IDK, man. Looks like not my cup of tea. 
