Panic announced that the Playdate Catalog will no longer accept games that use generative AI for content such as art and dialog. AI for coding is okay, for now, but you can tell Panic isn’t happy about it:
For the time being, we will allow Catalog titles that have used AI assistance in the coding process, but we will flag any title as such and specify the extent that it was used (for example, “Lua debugging”) so the customer can decide whether to support it or not.
I’ve been a huge fan of Panic for what, 25+ years? I remember what office I was working in back in the late 1990s when I was using some version of Transit Transmit on my Power Mac 7500. Just to set the context that I love the Panic folks.
A lot of people are struggling with how to adapt to a world with abundant content, free code, and helper robots sitting (virtually) on our shoulders influencing our work for the better and the worse. Some people feel a loss of creativity. Some feel empowered.
Panic is principled. They’ve created a fun, opinionated little gaming device that people love. So why shouldn’t the distribution rules be opinionated too? Personally, I think it’s swimming upriver. In the future, artists will seamlessly blend generative AI with their own drawings and paintings, creating something new that is still art, still an expression of human creativity.
The other aspect of the Playdate is that Catalog is not like the App Store. It’s one distribution channel, but you can still create your own games and put them on Itch.io, letting users sideload them. Use all the generative AI you want!
In 2011, I blogged about exclusive distribution in the App Store:
Apple, want to charge 30%? Go for it. Want to make the submission rules more strict? Fine. Want to adjust how you run the App Store to reflect what’s happening in the market? No problem. Just give developers an out. We are going to be back here year after year with the latest controversy until exclusive app distribution is fixed.
Panic has achieved that balance with the Playdate. Catalog is a curated store. Seasons are even more limited, only the select games Panic wants everyone to have. Developers who don’t want to play by Panic’s rules can distribute games elsewhere. If only Apple would adopt the same approach.
