Balatro's announcement that it will be coming to phones will bring global productivity to zero

Today, business dailies around the world closed their doors as the global economy was about to give up. Balatro, the time-eating black hole, has announced that it will be moving from our PCs and Consoles to our phones. This makes it even more portable than Steam Deck. You'll be able play it anywhere and anytime, which means everywhere and always.

Balatro will be available on the iOS App Store as well as Google Play for Android users from September 26. If you, like me, have an Apple Arcade subscription that you don't quite understand, you can get it for free. If not, you'll pay around $10.

This is not strictly PC gaming news. The more discerning readers will notice that iPhones and Androids are phones or at least tablets. Last I checked, the title of this outlet was not “Phone-Carrying Gamer”. Balatro, on the other hand, is a excellent title. It scored 91% when Abbie Stone reviewed it for PCG. The game regularly consumes hours of PC Gamer's staff time. This situation will only get worse once it is literally in our pockets all the time.

If you haven't heard of Balatro before, it's an arcade-style deckbuilding game that's (sorta) themed around poker. Instead of just trying to score the humdrum, traditional poker hand, you have to juggle all sorts multipliers and effects, including over a 100 Joker cards that have unique abilities, in order to generate absurdly large scores. For a time, at least one person posted a number larger than the total number of atoms in our universe every day to brag about the latest Balatro score.

It's the most delicious thing ever made. And while it has been portable via Steam Deck and Switch for a while now, it's presence on phones will make it more accessible. I almost wish I had a long wait in the waiting room ahead of me; it would make the time disappear.