Freedom to Remix and Share

Arcade makes sure you are free to build and share without worrying about fees or licenses.

All parts of the library are available free of charge and without complicated red tape:

  • Arcade’s code uses the widely-adopted commercial-friendly MIT License

  • The Built-In Resources are high-quality and don’t require attribution

Yes, You Can Make Commercial Games!

There is already a commercially available game made with Arcade.

Spelly Cat is a puzzle game available via Valve Software’s Steam marketplace. It is currently available for Windows and Linux.

Important

Arcade is currently a desktop-focused framework.

Web, Android, iPad, and iOS are not currently supported.

How Do I Publish My Games?

It takes require patience, experimentation, and persistence.

You will need to tinker with packaging and platform-specific application signing approaches in addition to gameplay. The following tutorials and documentation will help you get started on bundling:

You will also need to consult the platform documentation for any app store and achievements tracker you use.

Tip

Even the Arcade maintainers have trouble with this!

If you get stuck or frustrated, that’s okay. Breathe deep, and remember that you can always politely ask for help.

The MIT License

In addition to the arcade package on PyPI, the source code is available for modification and contributions under the OSI-Approved MIT License. Roughly speaking, that means using Arcade is an agreement to the following:

  • You won’t claim you wrote the whole library yourself

  • You understand Arcade’s features may have bugs

Tip

If you see a bug or a typo, we love Report Bugs.

For more information on the MIT license, please see the following for a quick intro:

Public Domain Assets

Arcade’s Built-In Resources are carefully hand-picked to meet three criteria:

  • High quality

  • Friendly style

  • Public domain (or as close as possible)

This means that unless you’re in Academia, you don’t have to worry. The licenses and attribution are all taken care of since we only ship built-in resources which minimize the requirements for you. If something requires special handling, we’ll warn you about it.

Where are all these assets from?

Mostly from Kenney.nl. Kenny is famous for creating a repository of free, high-quality CC0 (public domain) game assets. His work is funded by donations and Kenney’s Patreon.

Unlike other Creative Commons licenses, the CC0 doesn’t impose terms or conditions. It’s the lawyer version saying the following:

"I give permission to everyone to use this for whatever. Go make something cool!"

Although Arcade includes a few bundled assets which aren’t from Kenny.nl, we’ve made sure they’re released under a similar license.

What About Academia?

In addition to the MIT License, academics are expected to cite things.

Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered too. In fact, we have an entire page For Educators & Researchers. It covers crucial topics, such as:

  1. Citation Template

  2. Version Considerations

  3. 2.6.X Maintenance?