Panic Inc. is an American company that creates software and publishes video games. It is located in Portland, Oregon, and focuses on applications for macOS and iOS devices. The company began publishing video games in 2016.
Panic Inc. was started in 1997 by Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser.
Products
Panic is known for their most well-known app, Transmit, as well as their Audion media player, Unison Usenet client, and Nova code editor (a replacement for their earlier web development app, Coda). The company has received many Apple Design Awards for their products.
In 1999, Audion was introduced as a customizable MP3 media player. A competitor, SoundJam MP, was bought by Apple in 2000 and later developed into iTunes 1.0, which was released in 2001. Panic stopped supporting Audion in 2004 and made it available for free.
After Audion, Panic focused on two other software programs. In 2004, they released Unison, a Usenet reader, and Stattoo, a tool that shows "digital statistics" displayed on the Mac OS X desktop wallpaper. In 2007, they introduced Coda, a web development application. In 2019, Panic announced Nova, a replacement for Coda.
The company published their first video game, Firewatch, on February 9, 2016. Their second game, Untitled Goose Game, was released on September 20, 2019.
On May 22, 2019, Panic introduced Playdate, a handheld gaming device designed by Panic and Teenage Engineering, a Swedish firm. The device has a 400×240 pixel 1-bit screen, a directional pad on the left, two buttons on the right, and a mechanical crank on the right side.
Games for Playdate are released in "seasons," with two new games added each week, automatically downloaded to the device when available. There is also a store where users can buy additional games, the ability to install games manually, and two environments for creating games. While some games for Playdate are made by Panic, most are created by independent game developers, including Keita Takahashi, Zach Gage, Bennett Foddy, Shaun Inman, and Lucas Pope.