Balatro just won four Game Developers Choice Awards, including Game of the Year, but the person who made the game wasnt on stage to accept them.Instead, Playstack communications director Wout van Haldren spoke on behalf of Balatros developer, who goes by the alias LocalThunk, each time the game won an award. The team does that to give LocalThunk the freedom to work in the style that he likes, which we respect, Playstack marketing director Liz Cheng-Moore tells The Verge. Thats our job, van Haldren adds. Its an arrangement that the Playstack team figured out with LocalThunk ahead of other ceremonies like The Game Awards, where Balatro won three awards and was nominated for Game of the Year. LocalThunk didnt want to be public, but he also didnt want to be disrespectful to fans and the industry, so now the Playstack team accepts his awards on his behalf.Balatro was one of the biggest hits of 2024, launching after a series of popular demos to wide acclaim. Months after its initial launch, the game launched on iOS and Android, and as of January, its sold more than 5 million copies. LocalThunk was at the Game Developers Conference this week meeting with other developers, but van Haldren and Cheng-Moore think hell generally remain anonymous to the public. Its not that he wants to be the next Banksy, Cheng-Moore says. He just prefers not to be in the spotlight.His mysteriousness extends to how he communicates with the team and makes games. For example, Cheng-Moore tells me that his recent blog was something that he talked about one day and launched the next. Its fully done by him, Cheng-Moore says.And with Balatros upcoming gameplay update, which is set to launch sometime this year, I think hes just going to surprise us one day and hes going to say, hey, heres the 1.1 build,van Haldren says. I think he works best with that freedom, because thats how he made Balatro in the first place. He had no timelines, no stress. He could just tinker, and thats how the magic happened.van Haldren adds that I have not seen a single thing so far that hes working on. And I kind of like it because Ill be surprised as well.See More: