Steph Sterlings’ recent video hits it directly. The big publishers see Balatro doing well, so they go copy Balatro. They spend a lot of effort looking for the next Balatro in all the wrong places. Their attempts to copy it will fail, because people who like Balatro will just play Balatro. This will continue until there’s a new indie darling dominating the sales charts, and then they’ll try to copy that.

The industry is deeply misguided.