Steve Troughton-Smith"As of April 2026, [ @playdate's ] Catalog will no longer accept titles that use “Generative AI” for art, audio, music, text, or dialog."
What tiny bit of interest I had in Playdate development just evaporated, but they know their audience 🤷♂️. I would hope this isn't an app-submission quality-control problem masquerading as policy stance; other platforms like Steam, and events like Ludum Dare, tried going down this route too, and backed down as the world changed around them. The irony is that one of the reasons Playdate exists IIRC is because they feared a world where Apple says what they could/couldn't make. The turns have tabled
Dr. Juande Santander-Vela@stroughtonsmith interesting phrase of play…
leah szpunar@stroughtonsmith fwiw you can still sell/distribute games on other platforms like itch.io, and the sideloading process is incredibly easy (can just go to the website and upload the game file and then it downloads on device)
@saige that may be technically true, but if the platform is saying 'developer, you're not welcome', I'm not going to go out of my way to circumvent that, you know?
@stroughtonsmith fair, although the vibe ive always gotten is that the catalog is meant to be like, really curated and so most stuff is distributed outside of it (but also i could be wrong here, i haent done much with my playdate yet cause ive been so busy and i havent looked at catalog stuff in a while)
@saige oh for sure, to the audience of high-quality indie game devs to which the platform caters, this is probably the right policy. But it *is* an exclusionary policy, so some groups of developers will be excluded
Playdate@stroughtonsmith i think it’s been already pointed out, but there’s really no irony here — unlike iOS, we built the device from day one to allow sideloading from anywhere. catalog is just one, highly-curated storefront, and we’re already very picky about what can go in there. this is just one picky level more.
we would encourage you to make anything you want (with as much AI as you want) and put it anywhere you want, like Itch! lots of people do this all the time!
wolfwalksI love this for Playdate! I've always loved how much joy, love, and humanity gets put into everything made by, and with, Playdate. This seems like the next logical step: putting people, creativity, and innovation at the heart of the whole system.
Thank you for taking a stand! 💙
Leonick”art, audio, music, text, or dialog”
So generated code is OK? Games as a whole are pieces of art. Why is it OK for some parts to be generated but not others?
Either ban slop or don’t.
@Leonick it’s not necessarily “ok” — the developer must disclose the scope of any ai code use (from “debugging lua” to “vibe-coded from scratch”), which we factor into our review process (Catalog is highly curated, since sideloading is possible), and which will be listed on the store page so the consumer can decide if they wish to avoid it. since we’re the only (?) digital storefront to regulate Ai use, we’ll be discussing all of this constantly, too. humans figuring a thing out! :)
Leon@stroughtonsmith i thought i’d be way into playdate dev but 1-bit is insanely challenging from a ui and art perspective and not in a fun way like i was expecting
Joe@stroughtonsmith nah this rocks
Jerry Tromp@stroughtonsmith you can still sideload all the slob you want mate, no worries.
Archagon
sтеvаnЖIVADINOVIЋ@stroughtonsmith @playdate i appreciate the thoughtful carve-out for potential vibe coding.