[kinduff]

While I understand the sentiment of Playstack and LocalThunk to take down these kind of ports, it's a shame for the community because this will only make the game grow more.

[geoffpado]

It doesn’t sound like they did? The author seems to be proactively not releasing out of respect for LocalThunk, not out of fear. (And certainly not because they’ve already been sent a takedown or anything.)

[kinduff]

Because he didn't published it, but there are other similar ports that have been taken down.

For example, this C64 port was taken down: https://ko-ko74.itch.io/balatro-for-the-commodore-64-c64

[wavemode]

What legal standing would they even have, if the game were simply named something different from "Balatro"? Game mechanics aren't copyrightable, and the game assets are literally just playing cards...

[ronsor]

The clear solution is to not copy every aspect of the original and also release your port under a different name.