Definitely sounds like it could be real. If I had to guess their mounting a drive (or another partition) and it’s defaulting to read only. When restarting it resets the original permissions as they only updated the file permissions, but not the mount configuration.
Also reads like some of my frustrations when first getting into Linux (and the issues I occasionally run into still).
I also think most people don’t see the market, it’s only got this amount of attention on phones because of the success on steam.
A odd side note, someone was pretty clever and found a way to port the steam version to ios and Android well before the official port - https://retrohandhelds.gg/how-to-install-balatro-on-android-and-ios/. I’ll admit to having used this to play on my phone over the summer, but definitely bought it again once it hit the app store.