New postal game canceled a day after AI resistance

Postal: Bullet Paradise was completely killed less than 24 hours after its reveal due to fan concerns that it contained AI-generated assets.

It's been a while since we've had a new Postal game, which is either good news or bad news depending on how you feel about the controversial series. That silence was finally broken yesterday when Running With Scissors revealed the next game in the series, Postal: Bullet Paradise, an online co-op bullet-heaven with roguelite elements.

The reveal trailer for Bullet Paradise was quickly criticized for appearing to use AI-generated assets, both in cinematic 2D sequences and in-game footage. While Running With Scissors was quick to defend the trailer (and even insult fans on its Discord server) saying that no AI was used to develop it, it seems that wasn't the case after all.

Mail: Bullet Paradise canceled less than 24 hours after its reveal due to AI concerns

Goonswarm Games claims that AI was not used, but that it understands why fans think it was

Earlier today, Running With Scissors shared a statement confirming that Postal: Bullet Paradise had been “killed”, less than 24 hours after its reveal. The publisher explained that it had been “overwhelmed with negative reactions” from the community, which said “elements of the game are very likely AI generated” and caused “extreme damage to our brand”.

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All of this feedback led to Running With Scissors cutting ties with developer Goonswarm Games and killing Postal: Bullet Paradise altogether. This means that the game took less than 24 hours from its reveal to be canceled, which must surely be some kind of world record.

We have always been and always will be transparent with our community. Our trust in the development team is broken, that's why we killed the project. – Running with scissors

While it might seem like it's only a good thing that a game using AI was canceled so quickly, Running With Scissors' statement isn't sitting well with fans. Members of Running With Scissors took to Discord to defend the AI claims before the project was canceled, which included a lot of “incendiary” insults.

Interestingly, Goonswarn Games responded to the cancellation on Discord, standing by their claim that they didn't use AI to develop Postal: Bullet Paradise, but that they understand why fans reacted the way they did. The team is preparing a statement regarding the game's cancellation at the time of writing, but fans have collected a lot of evidence of what they believe to be AI-generated assets, so it's currently unclear what's actually going on.