Panic says Playdate Catalog won’t accept games made using generative AI

Panic, the company behind the small but excellent Playdate console, is taking a stance on generative artificial intelligence. Company owned Release Artificial Intelligence Reveal It is stated that starting this month, the Playdate Catalog “will no longer accept games that use ‘generative AI’ for art, audio, music, text, or dialogue.” Panic does allow developers to use AI-assisted coding, but also says “we will mark any title and specify the scope of its use (e.g., “Lua Debugging”) so that customers can decide whether to support it.”

Just the day after the panic announcement The third season of Playdate is in production and will launch later this year. For those who don’t remember, when you purchased Playdate, it included a “season” of games, 24 games in total, with two games released each week. Season 2 launched last year with 12 games in total – however, as game developer notesa game written and coded using generative artificial intelligence. Over on Bluesky, Panic was asked if it would reveal which games in Season 3 use AI, and the company confirmed that a requirement of Season 3 is that developers may not use AI for art, music, writing, or coding.

Specifically, Panic means that you cannot use large language models such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion, or audio generators such as MuseNet and Suno. Previously approved games with generative artificial intelligence will be allowed to remain in the catalog with disclosures describing the specific uses of the artificial intelligence. The company said the guidelines “are under ongoing discussion and may change at any time.”

I remember seeing AI reveals about games in the Playdate catalog in the past, but it makes sense to be clear up front about what Panic allows and what it denies. That said, it’s fairly easy to sideload games onto Playdate, so anyone wanting to make a game using generative AI isn’t entirely out of luck – although distribution and discovery will obviously be more difficult for Playdate owners.