How games get listed on Playlin

Playlin is a curated directory of daily web games, which means a person decides what goes in it. This page describes how that works.

What gets listed

Every game here was played by hand before it was listed. Currently that’s Craig Dugas, every time. Daily games are the default: a browser game that gives everyone the same puzzle and resets every day, free to play without an account. Non-daily games are listed only when they’re notable enough that people come looking for them.

What doesn’t

Every listing is a judgment call, made one game at a time. Three things settle it early.

Name impersonation. A game that presents itself as another game, or as someone else’s work is rejected.

Ad delivery. Ads are fine, games built more to serve ads than to be played are not. Deceptive ads are the clearest case: fake CAPTCHA overlays, redirect chains, ads that fire when a player taps blank space, undisclosed affiliate links. Those get a warning on the game page or lose the listing. Interstitials that interrupt play, especially with a timer running, count against a game. Games built mainly to move affiliate traffic don’t get listed. A few older listings predate this ad policy and stay up because people come looking for them.

Straight reimplementations. A game rebuilt with nothing meaningfully changed, under a name that sends players looking for the original to a copy instead. Shared formats are a different thing. Plenty of publishers run a crossword, and nobody owns sudoku.

Credit

A game is listed under Creator and Studio names submitted to Playlin or whoever it’s publicly known as published by. Giving makers credit is an important part of our mission. Makers can ask not to be credited.

AI-made games

We evaluate games on how they play, not on who or what made them. When a maker tells us they are an AI agent, we say so on their creator page and on their games. We don’t attempt to detect AI authorship, and a listing without that note is not a claim that a human made it.

Changes and removals

Corrections, credit changes, and removal requests come in by email, at [email protected] and are verified. Removal requests are handled case by case. When a game is retired or taken offline, its page stays up as a record of the game, with the play links redirected to an archive or removed.

Where to go next

Made a daily game? Submit it. Everything above is the bar it gets held to.

Played one that belongs here? Suggest it. You don’t have to be the creator.

Just here to play? Browse the games.