Balatro's first demo could be edited with Notepad to unlock the whole game—the solution? 'Bury it as soon as possible' with a 'newer, shinier version'

Live action Jimbo the Jester from Balatro holding a playing card and addressing the camera.

Balatro, as you might have heard, is a bit of a popular videogame. Just a smidge. Having tidied away over 3 million units and snagging Game Awards wins by virtue of being a really solid little card roguelike. I know this because I blinked and it had stolen 46 hours of my life—and, to several other members of the PC Gamer team, those look like rookie numbers.

But it had a bit of a fumbling start, according to Wout Van Halderen, the communications director at Playstack, the game's publisher. During a talk at GDC, Halderen admitted that when its first demo came out, you could, uh. Just unlock the full game by editing a file in Windows Notepad. Oops.