"Roguelike can be anything": Krafton exec is very tired of being pitched "Balatro with different cards"
Victor Lee, director of Europe investments for Krafton, expressed frustration over the overwhelming number of roguelike deckbuilders being pitched to him. He believes that the genre has become too narrow and lacks differentiation, making it difficult for developers to stand out. Lee advises developers to focus on their passion for a genre rather than chasing fleeting trends in the gaming industry.
- ▪Victor Lee has received around 250 roguelike deckbuilder pitches in the last year.
- ▪He argues that the term 'roguelike' is too broad and can encompass various game types.
- ▪Lee prefers to work with developers who are deeply passionate about their chosen genre.
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| Original publisher | Rock Paper Shotgun |
| Canonical URL | https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/roguelike-can-be-anything-krafton-exec-is-very-tired-of-being-pitched-balatro-with-different-cards |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 10:30:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T10:35:02.254Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T10:35:02.254Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | rzZEz-8ZZpLR |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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Home News "Roguelike can be anything": Krafton exec is very tired of being pitched "Balatro with different cards" "Genre is a misnomer" Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Playstack <img alt="Edwin Evans-Thirlwell avatar" src="https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/edwin-portrait.jpg?width=2048&height=2048&fit=bounds&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp" style="aspect-ratio: 1" width="767" height="720" > News by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell News Editor Published on May 20, 2026 1 comment Follow Balatro At Digital Dragons this year I somehow found myself attending a panel about games industry investment and publishing deals, featuring various senior M&A people gathered under the dread banner of "Capital Reality".
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