Postal goes open source after almost 20 years

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'Feels like yesterday our fans [sent] us wonderful e-mails and we received our very first lawsuit notice.'

2017 marks the 20th anniversary of Running With Scissors' dark, surreal and divisive isometric shooter Postal—which is why the developer has now released its source code to the public.  

"It was in September, 1997—over 19 years ago (we’ll round that out to 20, for marketing reasons)—when us humble folk from Running With Scissors unleashed our Robotron-inspired isometric shooter POSTAL to the unsuspecting public at large," says Running With Scissors via a blog post on its site. "It was an instant hit, grabbing the attention of gamers, parents and politicians across the country, and we’ve been supporting and updating it ever since. But now, (almost) 20 years later, we are entrusting our fans with the future of our game, by releasing its source code to the public. Consider it a belated Christmas present."

Earlier this year, an HD remake of the original—Postal: Redux—launched to much success, something RWS describe as an "especially big step" for the studio in preserving the '97 game's legacy. Last year, the devs teased the idea of making the original open source but only in the event someone ported it to Sega's beleaguered Dreamcast console. 

This hasn't yet been achieved, however is now possible should any pioneering players wish to do so. 

Running With Scissors' post continues: "It’s definitely been a wild ride for us all, and POSTAL means a lot to us – it’s our baby… But now we’re ready to hand the future of ‘the little shooter that could’ to the public at large. People have been asking, and we have been promising this for years now, but today we are proud to announce that the source code for POSTAL is officially released to the public on Bitbucket, under the GPL2 license. 

"Everyone now has ‘under the hood’ access, to see what makes POSTAL tick, and anyone with the time and skills can now tweak/change/update/modify anything in the game at all! And hey, if anyone feels the urge to port the game to other platforms (The Dreamcast, for example *wink* *wink*), then they absolutely can!"

Running With Scissors' post in full, as well as instructions for accessing Postal's source code, can be found this way.

Joe Donnelly
Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show