The studio behind the Postal franchise just announced that it will be publishing a brand new Postal game, to be developed by Goonswarm Games. Unfortunately, it even more recently announced it would be cancelling said game, due to accusations that Goonswarm had used generative AI in its development. And now, Goonswarm is shutting down.
The game, entitled Postal: Bullet Paradise, was announced earlier this week on Wednesday with a reveal trailer and press release. It purports to be a “timeline-hopping, dystopian bullet heavne first-person shooter” set in the Postal universe, where players can select from 11 unlockable Postal Dudes from different timelines and, well, shoot people.
However, not long after the trailer debuted, Postal fans began pointing out that the game had a lot of hallmarks of assets made with generative AI. When we went to embed the trailer into this article for you to watch, our access to the video file had been cut off and the official version had been removed from YouTube. You can still watch it through the Steam page here and judge for yourself.
Checking in on the Postal subreddit, you can see some of the feedback. Fan spoint out that the pixel sprites’ mouths “don’t make sense”, and elements such as shading and pixel placement are off somehow. They also point out that Goonswarm has almost certainly used generative AI in its games before (a close watch of this trailer has a number of pretty obvious indicators), making it not impossible that it would do so again.
When accusations initially began flying, both Goonswarm and Running With Scissors denied the use of generative AI. As Goonswarm told PCGamesN in a statement:
No generative AI was used for the reveal trailer or for the game. All assets were created by our human artists using standard tools. We’ve already shared layered PSDs, work-in-progress files, and other materials to confirm this. Any mistakes or rough spots in those files are being misinterpreted as ‘proof’ of AI, but they simply reflect the normal, human art-creation process
Meanwhile, while Running With Scissors initially promised to investigate further, studio co-owner Mike Jeret angered the Postal audience further by not just vehemently denying there was generative AI in the game, but also using fairly strong language toward the accusers, referring to them as “ignorant assholes” and telling anyone who thought the game used generative AI to “excuse yourself from our Discord.”
But finally, today, the publisher has taken a definitive stance. Running With Scissors announced it would be canceling the game entirely, saying that the audience feedback had caused “extreme damage to our brand and our company reputation” and that it no longer trusted the development team.
Here’s Running With Scissors’ statement in full:
After revealing Postal: Bullet Paradise, a title Running With Scissors was planning on publishing but not developing, we’ve been overwhelmed with negative responses from our concerned Postal Community. The strong feedback from them is that elements of the game are very likely AI-generated and thus has caused extreme damage to our brand and our company reputation.
We’ve always been, and will always be, transparent with our community. Our trust in the development team is broken; therefore, we’ve killed the project. We have a lot of good things coming (some you know and some you don’t).
Since forming Running With Scissors in 1996, we’ve always said that our fans are part of the team. Our priority is to always do right by the millions who support the Postal franchise. We are grateful for the opportunity to make the games we want to play, and will continue to focus on our new projects and updates coming in 2026 and beyond. We can’t wait to share more!
Fan feedback in response to this seems generally positive, with a number of people suggesting they were excited about the premise of the game and hoped it could be passed on to a different developer. Some are still hoping for an apology from Jeret for his language toward the community, but that has not yet manifested.
But there’s one group of folks who aren’t happy, and that’s Goonswarm. In a statement posted to Twitter, the studio announced it would be shutting down due to the cancellation of its game. Here’s their statement in full as well:
Our project, and everything we built over the psat six years, was canceled in just a few days.
Our studio was mistakenly accused of using AI-generated art in our games, and every attempt to clarify our work only escalated the situation. In the last few hours, we’ve received a large number of threats, insults, and mockery, which pushed us toward a very difficult decision.
We’re truly sorry for the artists who put their soul into this and supported our studio, only to face false AI accusations. It’s tough to pour so much energy into a game and end up caught in the middle of an AI war by accident.
We’ve decided to shut down the studio and end all future activities.
Thank you for being with us. Stay strong, play games.
This is far from the first time the Postal games, which are essentially about various guys committing mass shootings, have been embroiled in controversy. The last mainline game, Postal 4: NoRegerts, released in 2022 to a rare 2/10 from us. Our reviewer said that “the comedy is lazy and embarrassing, the combat is messy and painfully unsatisfying, and it runs so poorly on high-end hardware that it can scarcely be enjoyed at all even by those just hoping for some campy shock humor.” Running With Scissors has also released multiple spinoffs in recent years, such as 2022’s Postal: Brain Damaged by CreativeForge Games and a 2023 April Fool’s joke in POOSTALL Royale.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
