In brief
- Postal series fans said the Bullet Paradise trailer showed AI-generated artwork, prompting a swift cancelation.
- Discord insults and a mocking post on X deepened backlash around the externally developed spinoff.
- Running With Scissors said it’s shifting focus to other 2026 projects after reviewing the incident.
Running With Scissors, publisher of the controversial shooter game franchise Postal, said this week that it had canceled a newly revealed series entry one day after announcing it, responding to backlash after fans said the reveal trailer appeared to use AI-generated artwork.
The game, Portal: Bullet Paradise, was a fast-paced first-person shooter spinoff developed externally by Goonswarm Games. The backlash occurred just days after Running With Scissors railed against generative AI usage in gaming, taking a stand against AI in creative work.
The publisher said it ended the project because its trust in the development team had broken down, adding that it aimed to remain transparent with its community and still had several upcoming projects in the pipeline.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with negative responses from our concerned Postal community,” the company wrote on X. “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.”
The backlash against Postal: Bullet Paradise intensified after fans dissected the December 3 trailer and flagged details they argued were produced by AI tools. Late last month, Running With Scissors said on X that customers should know if a game was created using AI.
“Customers deserve to know if a game was crafted with creativity, soul and actual talent rather than some machine that craps out anything from a prompt,” they wrote.
Frustration from gamers escalated when company representatives defended the trailer on X and in Discord while insulting critics. Screenshots show company reps using expletives and slurs when responding to allegations.
As the images spread, Running With Scissors issued a separate X message addressing the conduct.
“We’d like, of course, to apologize to anyone who felt insulted in the heat of the moment, and we thank you for raising concerns at the time,” they said in an added post. “As for those who specifically sent us death threats, the apology does not apply.”
Running with Scissors did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
The Postal franchise began in 1997 and quickly became known for dark humor, confrontational satire, and graphic violence. The franchise takes its name from the term “going postal,” which originally referred to a series of workplace shootings by U.S. postal employees in the 1990s, and it later became slang for sudden, violent outbursts or shooting sprees more generally.
Several countries, including Australia, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, and France, banned entries in the series for its intense violence, graphic content, animal cruelty, and offensive themes. The property later inspired a widely panned 2007 live-action film directed by Uwe Boll.
The company said it would shift its attention to projects planned for 2026, and reiterated that threats against staff would be reported. The studio has not said whether Postal: Bullet Paradise could return in another form, and the experience has prompted renewed scrutiny of how developers and publishers disclose the use of AI in game production.
“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,” they wrote. “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.”
Following the backlash, Goonswarm Games announced on Friday that the studio would shut down and cease operations.
“Our project, and everything we built over the past six years, was canceled in just a few days,” it wrote in a statement.
“Our studio was mistakenly accused of using AI-generated art in our games, and every attempt to clarify our work only escalated the situation,” they said, adding that the company has received a “large number of threats, insults, and mockery.”
Major game publishers, including Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Square Enix, and Activision, have expanded their use of generative AI in recent years, adopting the technology for in-game asset creation, internal testing, moderation, and efforts to speed up development pipelines.
Developers have faced growing pushback from players who argue that AI-generated art can look inconsistent, rely on copyrighted training data, or replace work typically done by human artists. Those concerns have surfaced across studios experimenting with automated tools, regardless of project size.
The broader industry is also grappling with labor pressures. So far in 2025, more than 3,500 jobs have been cut across game studios, according to tracking site Gaming Layoffs, fueling worries that automation will further reduce opportunities for artists and other early-career developers. Nearly 15,000 game industry jobs were cut in 2024.
“We’re truly sorry for the artists who put their soul into this and supported our studio, only to face false AI accusations,” Goonswarm wrote. “It’s tough to pour so much energy into a game and end up caught up in the middle of an AI war by accident.”
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