Running With Scissors are the original Postal Devs. This is some dumb bullet hell spinoff that RWS outsourced to a company called Goonswarm. So RWS fired the team and cancelled the project.
Hell yeah! I haven't ran with the goonsquad in years but that gave me a flashback. That forum had everything, you'd learn, you'd laugh, you'd find scat.avi
A bunch of us played dune awakening at launch but its already done with and the game is dead. fun getting up to some shennanigans again until funcom nerfed out all the fun which drove off all the players.
It was going to die anyway. A lot of people made it to the deep desert in the first week of launch and it got old as fuck FAST for most players. Having people’s bases turn to dust after taking a break obliterated any hope for the game during such a critical time. Everything they did to address player concerns was done afterwards when most had already moved on.
They seem popping. I just need to get around to paying the $10 again because I don't want to use my current username. I don't remember the context but I lost a bet on there a long time ago and had my username changed to CaptainRapesAlot and my profile picture is Roddy Piper.
You'd be surprised just how much of early internet culture spawned out of Something Awful. It's more like Reddit and Tumblr and the like were spawned from the loins of Something Awful rather than the other way around.
But really? They were making games? Damn. And here I enjoyed dunking on them in TEST, now this makes it all the more worth the memories if that's what they were doing, because we shouldn't be replacing creators with GenAI
Not before vehemently defending that the game was not using AI and major fan outcry against the project due to obvious AI use by the studio Goonswarm.
This all happened AFTER they took a major stance against Tim Sweeney’s comments, arguing how you should disclose AI use and argued against AI use in general on Twitter on Nov 28.
So whether they cancelled it due to GenAI use, were misled by the studio about the use of GenAI or thanks to fan outrage and the blatant hypocrisy they found themselves in, we can only guess.
I've watched the steam trailer, honestly not sure why people are absolutely certain it's gen AI, it's pixel art sprites and there isn't anything special about them.
Not the game itself, but the promotional material certainly looks weird, although passable. Their other games’ art also look more AI-like.
I personally believe it’s a bit blown out, although passable, but like I said, this came after RWS defended their AI stance on social media, so them not declaring AI use (or not being aware) was definitely part of this, imo.
Goonswarm posted this huge wall of text on twitter that they were shutting down because of “mistakenly being accused of using AI Art” then hours later backtracked and said that “ the promo art does appear to include or be influenced by ai art” because they got so much backlash 😂😂it’s just sad really
It’s so weird to me because they stated in the follow up letter that they confirmed AI use was found only in the promotional material they outsourced, and they were very confident all the internal game work had no AI output. Seems a weird position to be in where you then decide to just close the studio. But then again, they seem to be shutting down due to the backlash and hate their staff are getting from all this, not the claim of AI use itself
The stupidest part about devs using generative AI in games is that if you spend even a little time to polish the results, it can quickly become indistinguishable from original art. Which means that when these studios cheap out and just generate their assets, they're not even putting in the work to do that with any degree of effort. Things like the distorted mouths on sprites (mentioned in the article) could've been corrected by a single artist in maybe a day of solid work. Like, if generative AI lowers the skill and effort requirement from a "10" to a "3", these people aren't even putting in a "1". It's like if someone downgraded your meal from "prepared by a professional chef" to "microwaved by a dude named Steve", and even then all Steve can think to make is a bowl of freezer-burnt veggies, and it's still cold when he's done.
Well, it's kind of a confirmation bias thing. Like if someone does this (use AI, then clean it up manually), and doesn't disclose it, you have no way of knowing. It's already hard to identify AI sometimes already for most people.
Same shit as with asset flipping. It's supposed to save time and effort making the rough draft but people just take the draft and go "eh, good enough, let's ship it".
Solo/duo dev may not have the time or skill to do that and not the money to pay someone. Big studios don’t necessarily have time to check everything and prefer to trust the workers. And some also don’t care.
If they don't have the time or skill to do something as simple as look at the shit they are putting into their game then they should not be making a video game.
Having to resort to AI gen art in the first place is bad enough. Then to not even do the bare minimum of QA the results just makes it worse.
Big studios have the time to check. They just don't want to invest that time to check because time is money and they want as big of a profit as possible.
looks at all the solo devs not using AI and how indie devs are using "AI free" as a selling point
Remembers I'm a software dev and we have strict peer reviews before anything gets put into production code
Well that's more research than you ever did, redditor. Can't wait to see if you're the kind to either double down on misinformation or just become u/deleted. About all you redditors are good for.
Yeah, some solo devs are good enough or have enough money to not have to use AI, good for them.
Not everyone though, but I'm not surprised that r/gaming is gatekeeping making games, after all, gatekeeping to feel superior is all you guys are good for, right?
It sounds like RWS (the original devs for Postal and the publishers of this game) saw the backlash, investigated the claims, and pulled the plug really quickly. I'll be optimistic and say that they acted so quickly because they didn't want the fallout of AI tainting their brand, and probably weren't aware of the studio that was working on the game using AI.
Or they knew, got caught, and back-pedaled so fast that they made people's heads spin. Either way, the AI touch of death killed the project almost overnight.
Even ignoring the AI usage this game didn't look like it would play well or act as a good adaptation of the source material to the genre, a postal 1 style twin stick shooter is way better adapted to a vampire survivors-style gameplay loop than this weird 2.5D fps. It would be relatively easy to make in-house too, just build it on top of postal redux with larger maps and roguelike mechanics.
As much as RWS is trying to be modern and props to them for working on public image, they're doing a yood job, but I really, REALLY don't like this infinite postal milking. It was what, like third Postal outsourced spin off, while Postal 4 is still feels raw and tries to mimic Postal 2, ultimately fails.
I know creating and promoting new IPs is hard, but you cant milk one IP to eternity.
Also I liked brain damaged, good job outsource team I know nothing about 👍
Insane that RWS and Postal are still around. I still remember how after Postal 3 flopped they turned around and dropped a Postal 2 DLC on the rebound. And I heard that was decently received.
Lmao and I just looked it up and didn’t even realize there was a Postal 4. Which also flopped. How are these fuckers still in business?
The only thing to learn from this is just how weak a groups premise for their anger needs to be to whine hard enough to put a few programmers back in the job queue.
Seems like barely anyone gave a shit about this game until they "shut down" their studio, so to me it just sounds like a desperate cry for attention.
It's not like that kind of thing is some new grift either. Anyone criticizes you ever, for any reason? Just say you're being "canceled" and watch as the maga cultists flock to your defense and throw all their money at you.
I thought it might be a publicity thing but the closing of the studio seemed like an odd twist on the formula, not a stunt in that way I guess.
I've seen the tactic you've described more than once, it works, the censorship angle has cropped recently, better buy it before it gets delisted, etc...
and have been forever. In the modern era, the perceived power of cancelling is extremely overstated, and no one who claims they were cancelled for political reasons actually lost any ability to publicly speak or have attention showered on them.
Not exactly, people have lost their jobs over false accusations, plenty of people.
That's not an overstatement, it's the basic aim of the campaigns, to destroy somebody's livelihood through character assassination and it often works.
I've seen this happen to people over political/ideological views more than anything else.
Taking somebody's ability to speak on a public forum?
You can barely remove somebody from a platform and there's plenty platforms around, I'd say that's a rarity at best and not the true intention of the group.
It's called mob rule and it's sadly still around in a more cowardly form.
In any case, it's a petty thing to complain about, a bot rendered picture, oh the humanity, we'll cancel the game and shutter the studio because of internet tragics.
Every single game dev studio today uses ai. Whether it's subtle photoshop generative ai to remove a cloud or fully generated textures, or chatgpt spell-checking a script, all use ai
Running With Scissors are the original Postal Devs. This is some dumb bullet hell spinoff that RWS outsourced to a company called Goonswarm. So RWS fired the team and cancelled the project.
As in the old Eve Online alliance? Didn't know they were making games now...
Goonswarm originally came from the something awful forums, but yes it was the old eve online alliance too
And they have stairs in their house
p r o t e c
Hell yeah! I haven't ran with the goonsquad in years but that gave me a flashback. That forum had everything, you'd learn, you'd laugh, you'd find scat.avi
A bunch of us played dune awakening at launch but its already done with and the game is dead. fun getting up to some shennanigans again until funcom nerfed out all the fun which drove off all the players.
It was going to die anyway. A lot of people made it to the deep desert in the first week of launch and it got old as fuck FAST for most players. Having people’s bases turn to dust after taking a break obliterated any hope for the game during such a critical time. Everything they did to address player concerns was done afterwards when most had already moved on.
The something awful forums are still around. Arguably better now that lowtax.. uh,.. isn’t around.
They seem popping. I just need to get around to paying the $10 again because I don't want to use my current username. I don't remember the context but I lost a bet on there a long time ago and had my username changed to CaptainRapesAlot and my profile picture is Roddy Piper.
You might be able to get a free name change if you message an admin. A lot of the shitty early 2000s humor is gone and frowned upon now.
That would be cool. Then I could be CaptainUsedToRapeAlot
Fuck all goons
Kartoon was right
Something Awful?
JFC those guys. Like the worst parts of tumblr and reddit had a baby and it got brain damage on the way out.
You'd be surprised just how much of early internet culture spawned out of Something Awful. It's more like Reddit and Tumblr and the like were spawned from the loins of Something Awful rather than the other way around.
Also goons are very much still active in EVE and still the largest alliance. But yes they are very old if that’s what you meant.
Karmafleet is recruiting!
Grr Gons hat gons
But really? They were making games? Damn. And here I enjoyed dunking on them in TEST, now this makes it all the more worth the memories if that's what they were doing, because we shouldn't be replacing creators with GenAI
Little bees, little bees...
Always follow orders
GoonWaffe Reprezent!
You would think RWS would have learned not to do that after Postal 3 where they can't even fix the game
Tell me you didn't play Postal 4 without telling me you didn't play Postal 4.
They didn't fix it because they didn't see it as a problem that it was broken judging from the terrible experience that was Postal 4.
That's not what happened with 3 though. They had no way of fixing the game because of contracts.
Goonswarm sounds like an 80s cartoon villain.
In EVE Online that alliance kind of is
Especially back when Mittens was still running the show
Not before vehemently defending that the game was not using AI and major fan outcry against the project due to obvious AI use by the studio Goonswarm.
This all happened AFTER they took a major stance against Tim Sweeney’s comments, arguing how you should disclose AI use and argued against AI use in general on Twitter on Nov 28.
So whether they cancelled it due to GenAI use, were misled by the studio about the use of GenAI or thanks to fan outrage and the blatant hypocrisy they found themselves in, we can only guess.
I've watched the steam trailer, honestly not sure why people are absolutely certain it's gen AI, it's pixel art sprites and there isn't anything special about them.
Not the game itself, but the promotional material certainly looks weird, although passable. Their other games’ art also look more AI-like.
I personally believe it’s a bit blown out, although passable, but like I said, this came after RWS defended their AI stance on social media, so them not declaring AI use (or not being aware) was definitely part of this, imo.
seems like Postal alright
Hey man can I ask you something?
"Could you sighn this petition?" - Dude
Goonswarm posted this huge wall of text on twitter that they were shutting down because of “mistakenly being accused of using AI Art” then hours later backtracked and said that “ the promo art does appear to include or be influenced by ai art” because they got so much backlash 😂😂it’s just sad really
"Oops, you caught us. Guess we'll just have to shut down the studio. Clearly this is the fault of toxic fans."
Every single time...that's a classic at this point
It’s so weird to me because they stated in the follow up letter that they confirmed AI use was found only in the promotional material they outsourced, and they were very confident all the internal game work had no AI output. Seems a weird position to be in where you then decide to just close the studio. But then again, they seem to be shutting down due to the backlash and hate their staff are getting from all this, not the claim of AI use itself
Don't trust them one bit. Ever seen a studio do that? It's likely AI assets all the way down and they don't have the resources to change it all
Honestly I don’t expect anything less from Goons
Ey boys this wisecrack don't know when to shut up, eh? I'm sure the boss would like a word
unless a company can 100% say there is NEVER any AI used by ANY of their devs, I assume the opposite
"influenced by ai art" is a new one. Like double plagiarism
Is it AI art still if you have AI generate it and then someone traces over it? =p
Who the hell is ‘influenced’ by AI? 🤣
these days, a scary amount of people
The stupidest part about devs using generative AI in games is that if you spend even a little time to polish the results, it can quickly become indistinguishable from original art. Which means that when these studios cheap out and just generate their assets, they're not even putting in the work to do that with any degree of effort. Things like the distorted mouths on sprites (mentioned in the article) could've been corrected by a single artist in maybe a day of solid work. Like, if generative AI lowers the skill and effort requirement from a "10" to a "3", these people aren't even putting in a "1". It's like if someone downgraded your meal from "prepared by a professional chef" to "microwaved by a dude named Steve", and even then all Steve can think to make is a bowl of freezer-burnt veggies, and it's still cold when he's done.
Anno 117 even includes it in the art book they're are selling
I feel like if that’s what they wanted to do they wouldn’t be using gen AI
Well, it's kind of a confirmation bias thing. Like if someone does this (use AI, then clean it up manually), and doesn't disclose it, you have no way of knowing. It's already hard to identify AI sometimes already for most people.
Same shit as with asset flipping. It's supposed to save time and effort making the rough draft but people just take the draft and go "eh, good enough, let's ship it".
Yeah the AI art is the worst part about sins of a solar empire 2, which is otherwise one of the best RTS/4x games released in the past few years
Solo/duo dev may not have the time or skill to do that and not the money to pay someone. Big studios don’t necessarily have time to check everything and prefer to trust the workers. And some also don’t care.
If the devs don’t care why should we care about their “game”
They don't care about using AI, if you do just don't play the game.
> just don't play the game.
I wont.
If they don't have the time or skill to do something as simple as look at the shit they are putting into their game then they should not be making a video game.
Having to resort to AI gen art in the first place is bad enough. Then to not even do the bare minimum of QA the results just makes it worse.
Big studios have the time to check. They just don't want to invest that time to check because time is money and they want as big of a profit as possible.
looks at all the solo devs not using AI and how indie devs are using "AI free" as a selling point
Remembers I'm a software dev and we have strict peer reviews before anything gets put into production code
Well that's more research than you ever did, redditor. Can't wait to see if you're the kind to either double down on misinformation or just become u/deleted. About all you redditors are good for.
Yeah, some solo devs are good enough or have enough money to not have to use AI, good for them.
Not everyone though, but I'm not surprised that r/gaming is gatekeeping making games, after all, gatekeeping to feel superior is all you guys are good for, right?
It sounds like RWS (the original devs for Postal and the publishers of this game) saw the backlash, investigated the claims, and pulled the plug really quickly. I'll be optimistic and say that they acted so quickly because they didn't want the fallout of AI tainting their brand, and probably weren't aware of the studio that was working on the game using AI.
Or they knew, got caught, and back-pedaled so fast that they made people's heads spin. Either way, the AI touch of death killed the project almost overnight.
Well RWS pushed back at first, insulted some fans and then apologized after the blowback continued to grow out of hand
Tainting their brand? Have you seen Postal 3 & 4?
Even ignoring the AI usage this game didn't look like it would play well or act as a good adaptation of the source material to the genre, a postal 1 style twin stick shooter is way better adapted to a vampire survivors-style gameplay loop than this weird 2.5D fps. It would be relatively easy to make in-house too, just build it on top of postal redux with larger maps and roguelike mechanics.
I bet they regret nothing.
I'm sure they regret getting caught
Why would they?
All the information you need is that the company that was paid to 'make' this game was called Goonswarm.
Goonswarm.
Yeah.
"Nothin' personal man, but you're fired."
(Based af RWS, keep AI slop out of the industry)
I’m sure there’s some witty joke in there about deciding not to do the work because they got caught trying not to do the work.
jokes, yes, witty,no
As much as RWS is trying to be modern and props to them for working on public image, they're doing a yood job, but I really, REALLY don't like this infinite postal milking. It was what, like third Postal outsourced spin off, while Postal 4 is still feels raw and tries to mimic Postal 2, ultimately fails.
I know creating and promoting new IPs is hard, but you cant milk one IP to eternity.
Also I liked brain damaged, good job outsource team I know nothing about 👍
They kicked off people were accusing them of using ai and they were sick of the accusations
then shortly after admitted AI was used, fuck em
What about 2 redux? That one i care about
Insane that RWS and Postal are still around. I still remember how after Postal 3 flopped they turned around and dropped a Postal 2 DLC on the rebound. And I heard that was decently received.
Lmao and I just looked it up and didn’t even realize there was a Postal 4. Which also flopped. How are these fuckers still in business?
Buttsauce
Getting Postal cancelled always make everyone happy and both companies are in huge danger.
Bruh... I saw the trailer for this on RWS TikTok page not even a week ago
This does seem somewhat suspicious.
If the logo outsourced to AI was being used, wouldn't simply having human artists manually modify the logo have been sufficient?
As I recall, the studio's announcement specifically stated that only the logo used AI technology.
More likely, they probably had already lost interest in the game and had been considering closing the studio even before this controversy arose.
Going to be real here, it's a dogshit game that wouldnt have done well regardless.
Anyone who would try to make a new Postal game would 1,000% not be above using dogshit, AI slop.
Same story spam twice in a 24 hour period
I was looking forward to this game. It did seem off, but fun as hell.
Crazy that it has to end like this, instead of admitting it and telling the base that they will polish it and release a new trailer in a week or 2.
Then again some people just rage hate on everything AI related ruining it for others
It would have been OK if they embraced it instead of telling lies
No it wouldn’t
Yeah
Make it i want a.i generative art in my games. 🎨
Bro likes eating shit on a plate
Username does not check out. Smh.
Cancelling people is still a thing?
So childish.
Here's the "both sides" clown-bot
There's clown-like about being a rational person.
Cancelling is one superficial angle.
A moral compass has been around a long, long time.
I've seen cancelling target people based on clearly false evidence.
It's never about any kind of justice, it's about power, specifically the power of groupthink and projection.
It's just a more palatable form of bullying, harrassment and vigilantism easily digested by the terminally online.
They learned the consequences for poor business practice. This isnt based on ideology.
Spoken like a true keyboard warrior.
The only thing to learn from this is just how weak a groups premise for their anger needs to be to whine hard enough to put a few programmers back in the job queue.
You know someone has no argument, and they struggle to support their own flawed thinking, when they resort to confirmation bias.
So very transparent. So very desperate.
On full display, ladies and gentleman.
I would take the L, dude. You look like an idiot and you keep digging 🤣.
They're the ones who "canceled" their own studio lmao
I see that, but over complaints about a promo pic?
Come on.
I guess so?
Seems like barely anyone gave a shit about this game until they "shut down" their studio, so to me it just sounds like a desperate cry for attention.
It's not like that kind of thing is some new grift either. Anyone criticizes you ever, for any reason? Just say you're being "canceled" and watch as the maga cultists flock to your defense and throw all their money at you.
I thought it might be a publicity thing but the closing of the studio seemed like an odd twist on the formula, not a stunt in that way I guess.
I've seen the tactic you've described more than once, it works, the censorship angle has cropped recently, better buy it before it gets delisted, etc...
please, whatever you say next, just don't tell us your opinion about hitler
Why is it always Hitler?
canceling isn’t real
Targeted harassment/smear campaigns are very real.
and have been forever. In the modern era, the perceived power of cancelling is extremely overstated, and no one who claims they were cancelled for political reasons actually lost any ability to publicly speak or have attention showered on them.
Not exactly, people have lost their jobs over false accusations, plenty of people.
That's not an overstatement, it's the basic aim of the campaigns, to destroy somebody's livelihood through character assassination and it often works. I've seen this happen to people over political/ideological views more than anything else.
Taking somebody's ability to speak on a public forum? You can barely remove somebody from a platform and there's plenty platforms around, I'd say that's a rarity at best and not the true intention of the group.
Well, it is when it happens to our guys but that's different
They cancelled themselves, what even is your point? 😂
They cancelled the game over complaints over nothing.
Seems like a waste of time for all concerned.
It's pronounced "consequences" and yes, they've been around forever.
It's called mob rule and it's sadly still around in a more cowardly form.
In any case, it's a petty thing to complain about, a bot rendered picture, oh the humanity, we'll cancel the game and shutter the studio because of internet tragics.
Who was this even hurting?
Consequences are childish now 😭 isn’t irony fun?
Consequences for what?
It was a picture for a video game still in the production phase.
Nobody was hurt, you're being irrational.
It's a non-issue and the 'backlash' is childish.
You don't understand irony either, there's none here.
Every single game dev studio today uses ai. Whether it's subtle photoshop generative ai to remove a cloud or fully generated textures, or chatgpt spell-checking a script, all use ai
The examples you are making are a world apart from making assets with generative AI and putting them in game.
doesn't make it any less true
It literally makes it less true.