Balatro creator LocalThunk stays so anonymous, a GDC attendee couldn’t believe how he “crushed” the roguelike’s base difficulty: “‘Wow you must have played this before!'”

There are, of course, many benefits to maintaining anonymity in our increasingly exposed, digitized world. Remaining under-the-radar affords you privacy to exist more peacefully, or, if you’re pseudonymous Balatro creator LocalThunk, it allows you to sneak into your own GDC demo booth like a little rat in a pizza parlor.

“One of my fav moments from GDC,” LocalThunk says in a series of posts on Bluesky. “They had a booth set up to play Balatro since it was an award nominee. I watched for a bit, then I gave it a go myself.”