Panic will no longer allow developers to publish titles that use generative AI tools to generate art, audio, music, text, or dialog onto its Playdate storefront, Catalog.
In a post on Bluesky, the company also confirmed that Playdate Season 3—a premium bundle of games rolled out on a weekly basis—will not feature titles that have leveraged generative AI in any capacity.
The news comes after Wheelsprung, a game that used generative AI tools Github Copilot and ChatGPT to assist with coding and writing, was included in Playdate Season 2.
As noted by video game zine, Exp., Panic said Wheelsprung slipped under the radar because it simply didn’t consider the possibility that a Season 2 developer would use LLMs. “In hindsight, that was naive—we take full responsibility,” said Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser at the time.
Now, Panic has published an official AI Disclosure confirming it will be prohibiting most forms of generative AI usage on its Playdate storefront. An exception, however, is being made for titles that use generative AI coding tools.
“As of April 2026, Catalog will no longer accept titles that use ‘Generative AI’ for art, audio, music, text, or dialog,” reads the disclosure. “There are lots of people in the world who are extremely eager and excited to create beautiful music, art, and words for your Playdate creation.”
“[…] Any previously approved or released Catalog titles that used ‘Generative AI’ will still be available on Catalog at this time, and will be flagged as such with an explanation of how it was used.
“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. All of this is under constant discussion and is subject to change at any time. We will update this page as we make further changes.”
Panic explained its definition of generative AI includes LLMs such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Google Gemini; AI-based image generation models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E; and AI-based audio generation models including MuseNet, Suno, and Udio.
It does not include custom-written functions for determining in-game behaviors.
Game Developer has reached out to Panic for more information.