Rockstar switched off GTA Online’s casino games for Australian players this summer, and PEGI now rates loot-box style purchases more strictly than ever. Yet the best video games with gambling scenes remain among modern digital entertainment’s most gripping moments.
The tables went dark on 28 July. Australian GTA Online accounts found the Diamond Casino’s blackjack, roulette and slots locked, joining more than 50 countries where its games were already restricted, though nothing won there can be cashed out. Real money is a different story. Adults searching for casino sites licensed in Ireland face a market in transition, as the country’s new Gambling Regulatory Authority began licensing remote betting on 1 July and will only open casino applications across 2027 and 2028.
None of that has cooled the thrill of an in-game gamble. With Grand Theft Auto VI due on 19 November, these are the video games with gambling scenes still worth a seat at the table.
Open-World Casinos Where the House Always Wins
Grand Theft Auto Online
The Diamond Casino & Resort opened on 23 July 2019 with three card poker, blackjack, roulette, slots, Inside Track horse racing and the Lucky Wheel. The later Diamond Casino Heist let players rob the very building they had been losing chips in.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Arthur Morgan’s frontier deals out poker, blackjack, dominoes and the nerve-shredding knife game five finger fillet, and a lamplit hand of Texas hold’em remains one of Xbox’s most atmospheric card games. The original Red Dead Redemption has also run natively on Xbox Series X|S since 2 December 2025.
Fallout: New Vegas
Obsidian’s 2010 classic turns the Strip into the wasteland’s gaudiest gambling den, with blackjack, roulette and slots at the Tops and Gomorrah, while the Dead Money expansion drags players into the cursed Sierra Madre. Prime Video’s Fallout took its second season to New Vegas, wrapping on 4 February.
Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s 2023 spin-off goes all in with the Castle, an underworld playground aboard a mysterious ship in the bay, where Kiryu plays high or low stakes poker and blackjack between Coliseum bouts.
Card Tables and Dice Rolls Worth the Gamble
Star Wars Outlaws
Kay Vess plays Kessel Sabacc across the Outer Rim, and the Wild Card story pack, released on 21 November 2024, builds a whole caper around a high-stakes sabacc tournament where she crosses paths with Lando Calrissian.
Balatro
LocalThunk’s poker-inspired roguelike never takes a real wager, yet PEGI rated it 18 for gambling imagery after its February 2024 launch. An appeal cut that to PEGI 12 a year later, the board ruling that its fantastical twists outweighed its poker hands. It had sold five million copies by then.
Cuphead
Studio MDHR’s 2017 Xbox favourite starts at the Devil’s craps table, where Cuphead bets the brothers’ souls on one roll and throws snake eyes. He and Mugman then chase the Devil’s debtors for their soul contracts, all the way to a showdown with King Dice.
Why Gambling in Video Games Is Under the Spotlight
Since 1 June, PEGI has rated newly submitted games that sell paid random items, from loot boxes to card packs, at 16 or above, its biggest overhaul since 2019, while games that simulate casino gambling can still land an 18.
Every game above serves up the rush of a winning hand with nothing to cash out. Real-money gambling is strictly 18+, and anyone in Ireland who feels it slipping out of control can call the free, 24-hour GamblingCare helpline on 1800 936 725.
