Running With Scissors briefly unveiled a new entry in its long‑running, controversial first‑person shooter series, Postal, only to cancel the project days later. The studio behind the announcement says the game’s publisher and its development partner faced intense backlash and threats that culminated in the developer closing its doors.
In a promotional post shared by Running With Scissors on December 4, 2025, the company introduced Postal: Bullet Paradise as a “timeline‑hopping dystopian bullet heaven” that would carry the franchise’s trademark dark humor. The title—developed by Goonswarm Games—appeared to borrow mechanics popularized by arena roguelikes such as Vampire Survivors. Players were slated to control various iterations of the Postal Dude, combating waves of cultists and protesters in a deliberately outré campaign that leaned into the series’ shock‑humor roots.
The game had been listed with a planned release window of Q3 2026 on Steam, and ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 were indicated on its announcement materials.
Reaction to the reveal was immediate and hostile. Fans raised allegations that some visual assets were generated with AI, and the dispute escalated quickly online. Running With Scissors co‑owner Mike Jaret defended the project and its creators, but the studio soon reversed course. In a statement posted to its X account, Running With Scissors said it had “killed the project” after being “overwhelmed with negative responses from our concerned POSTAL Community,” and added that its trust in the development team had been broken.
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…
— Running With Scissors (@RWSstudios) December 4, 2025
At the same time, the game’s reveal trailer was privatized on YouTube, and the Steam listing now displays a notice stating that POSTAL: Bullet Paradise is no longer available on the store; the title has been removed from search results.
Prior to the cancellation, Jaret had pushed back against the AI accusations in the franchise’s Discord, dismissing the claims and urging detractors to leave the community if they remained convinced the artwork had been produced by generative tools. The dispute intensified, and on December 5, 2025, Goonswarm Games announced it was shuttering the studio after receiving threats and abusive messages tied to the controversy.
We've shut down the studio pic.twitter.com/tbW2f2VQxL
— Goonswarm Games (@goonswarmgames) December 5, 2025
Goonswarm’s public statement said the studio had been falsely accused of using AI for its art, and that attempts to clarify the situation only escalated the backlash. The company wrote that a flood of threats, insults, and ridicule left the team with no viable path forward and forced the difficult decision to cease operations. Goonswarm founder Artem Korovkin told Polygon that the closure affects nine developers and contractors, and that while the studio still owns the project’s source code, continuing development does not appear realistic under the circumstances.
Running With Scissors’ original announcement page for the game remains accessible on its site, but the trailer has been made private and the Steam store entry has been removed. For context, the Postal franchise began in 1997 with the release of the original off‑color shooter for Mac and Windows. The series has continued through multiple sequels and spinoffs, most recently Postal 4: No Regerts (2022) and the throwback Postal: Brain Damaged, and the team has previously announced work on a remake titled Postal 2 Redux.
We have reached out to Running With Scissors for additional comment and will update this post if they respond.
Watch the trailer for Postal: Bullet Paradise (courtesy of Gamers Prey) below:
Sources:
Running With Scissors announcement,
Steam store page.
Source: Polygon
