TL;DR
- exported pico-8 carts are standalone applications
- publishing to
sploreis manual/opt-in, and never default or automatic
As aloeheart pointed out:
That person is actually wrong about that. Games in splore are put there manually by their creators. You can export your pico 8 game in a binary format that both does not require pico-8 to play and doesn’t show the source code.
That is to say, all carts you make can be exported to run standalone.
They’re also kept off of splore, unless you explicitly and deliberately publish them on the BBS.