Panic Inc. is an American
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
and
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
company based in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...
. The company specializes in
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
and
iOS applications and began publishing video games in 2016.
Panic was founded by Steven Frank
and Cabel Sasser.
Products
Software
Panic is known for their flagship app
Transmit,
[
] Audion
The Audion was an electronic detecting or amplifying vacuum tube invented by American electrical engineer Lee de Forest in 1906.De Forest patented a number of variations of his detector tubes starting in 1906. The patent that most clearly covers ...
,
Unison
In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm.
Definition
Unison or pe ...
, and Nova (a successor to their web development app
Coda). The company has won multiple
Apple Design Awards for their products.
In 1999, Audion was introduced as a skinnable
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...
media player. One of its competitors,
SoundJam MP, was acquired by Apple in 2000 and was further developed into
iTunes 1.0, which became available in 2001. Panic retired Audion in 2004 and began distributing it free of charge.
[
]
After Audion, Panic focused development on two other software applications. In 2004, they released Unison, a
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
reader. In 2007, the web development application Coda was introduced.
[
] In 2019, Panic announced a successor to Coda named Nova.
Video games
The company published their first video game, ''
Firewatch'', on February 9, 2016.
Panic published their second game, ''
Untitled Goose Game'', on September 20, 2019.
On May 22, 2019, Panic unveiled
Playdate, a
handheld video game console
A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the cons ...
.
Playdate
Playdate is a handheld gaming device, designed by Panic in collaboration with the Swedish firm
Teenage Engineering. The device features a 400x240 pixel
1-bit screen, a directional pad on the left, two buttons on the right, and a mechanical crank on the right edge of the device.
Games will be released in "seasons", at a rate of two games per week for twelve weeks. Games will automatically download to the device when available. While some video games for Playdate are being produced at Panic, most games are created by indie game developers such as
Keita Takahashi,
Zach Gage,
Bennett Foddy, and Shaun Inman.
Awards
References
{{reflist
American companies established in 1997
Macintosh software companies
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
Software companies based in Oregon
Privately held companies based in Oregon
Video game companies of the United States
Video game companies established in 1997
Software companies established in 1997
Video game publishers
1997 establishments in Oregon
Software companies of the United States
Apple Design Awards recipients