IMC Buys Playstack for $169M, Inherits Balatro Royalties

Playstack, the indie publisher that lucked into generational hit Balatro, is being acquired by Integrated Media Company through its subsidiary VantageCo in a deal valued at roughly $169 million (£112.4 million).

IMC is the same outfit that owns GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and Fandom. So the company that publishes one of the biggest indie games of the decade now sits under the same corporate umbrella as a chunk of the gaming press that reviews it. File that one away for later.

The headline number comes with an asterisk. Kotaku has the figure at around $151 million, while other reporting pegs it closer to $169 million. The gap likely comes down to how earnouts — the part of the price paid later if the company hits performance targets — get counted. Either way, it's a lot of money for a publisher that, until February 2024, was best known for The Case of the Golden Idol and Abiotic Factor.

Then Balatro happened. The poker roguelike from solo developer LocalThunk has sold more than 5 million copies and took Best Independent Game at the 2024 Game Awards, according to Kotaku. Playstack reportedly publishes with an 85%+ hit ratio, which is the kind of number that makes acquirers open their checkbooks. The company's gross revenue for 2025 came in at £55.3 million, up 24% year over year. Patrick Johnson at Playstack is the one who found Balatro on its first day on Steam, which is a reminder that this entire industry sometimes runs on one person noticing the right thing at the right time.

CEO Harvey Elliott says nothing changes. "Our team, our strategy, and our commitment to publishing premium indie games remain exactly the same. For now, it's business as usual," he said. The "for now" is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence, but the operational pitch is straightforward: same team, same indie focus, new owner.

The interesting question is what IMC actually wants here. The company already owns editorial properties that cover games. Adding a publisher with a hit-rate track record and an active royalty stream from Balatro and The Rise of the Golden Idol gives them direct exposure to the thing their media properties write about. Whether GameSpot reviewers will be asked to disclose corporate ownership every time they cover a Playstack release is a question someone in IMC's legal department is probably already drafting a memo about.

For TruFin, the AIM-listed group that has held Playstack, this is the cash-out. They bought into a small publisher and are walking away with nine figures, largely on the back of one card game. The indie publishing scene is full of people who'll spend the next year wondering why their pitch deck didn't get the same response.

LocalThunk, for the record, retains the Balatro IP. The deal changes who signs Playstack's paychecks, not who owns the jokers.