I heard about balatro so now you have to hear about balatro

 They like it because it's boring and easy. Boring and trivial are huge selling points for videogames. 

 Balatro calls itself a 'roguelite' which means you can pretend to yourself you're hardcore if you play it. Even though it's even easier than vampire survivors, which is popular because it does the slot machine thing - it flashes and goes ding. It pretends you've really accomplished something when your autoattacking zero-aim-required killbot opens a chest - and gamers are more than happy to pretend along with it.

 Eternal September. The whole point of a roguelike is that you die constantly. The game actually fights back. It's supposed to be the genre for players who get bored when the game can't take a round off them.
 The genre has now been fully colonized by normies, who get 'frustrated' if they can't go full power fantasy, winning all the time every time. 

 Balatro is poker. It could be more boring if it were roguelite chess, I suppose. Zero creativity, 100% familiarity. AAA parochial navel-gazing rating. It's for gamers who prefer never to have to learn anything, and never want to see anything new. 

 Balatro is very definitely not for numerate players. It seems to be particularly popular with illiterates. 

 I suppose this is another cycle of fashion. Roguelikes became high-status since they were games for numerate literates.  The middle class ""copied"" the idea, except of course they're stupid, so now roguelikes are for stupid players. Some other genre must emerge to mark games worth playing, which will in turn be subsumed by the hylic mass of meat that calls itself the electorate. 

 I find it highly ironic that skillful games are high-status, and yet nobody gives any respect to any genuinely skillful individual. It's a tarp. They keep trying to mimic someone they despise IRL, lol.
 If the loser managed to win they would still transmute it into a cringe fail.