Postal III
It is covered here for historical and technical reference.
🌐 View the delisted game on Steam store (via Browser | Steam client*)
*Steam required, click here to download Steam.
Supported OS: 
Windows
Steam Deck status: 
Unsupported - 
More info on ProtonDB
Also available from the following other storefronts or websites:
Zoom Platform (DRM-Free)
Postal III (alternatively Postal 3) follow the Postal Dude's failed 1-day career in video game development and the ensuing "accidental" nuclear destruction of Paradise AZ (Apocalypse Weekend).
We rejoin the Postal Dude and his psychotic pitbull Champ as they emigrate to the ironically named town of Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the Global Economic Meltdown,
psychotic left-wing "Green" extremism and hypocritical right-wing Government corruption, life in Catharsis isn't much better.
A supposed sequel to legendary POSTAL 2 (not to be confused with Portal 2), a game known for it's controversial content, it received mixed to negative reviews from critics and overwhelmingly positive reviews from fans. Postal III was originally a sequel to POSTAL 2 which would be later retconned by series developer "Running With Scissors" after release. The game was infamous for being outsourced to Akella's subsidiary company, Trashmasters, along with it's development trouble due to Global Recession, and when the game was released, it ended up with negative reviews from both critics and fans of the series. Criticism aside, it is also one of the only Source engine game to feature proper third-person camera support (and without using cheats to enable it), alongside Double Action: Boogaloo and 
Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
In November 2022, this game has been delisted on 
Steam, due to unknown reasons but, according to series developer Running with Scissors and POSTAL fans, this is possibly related to the DRM issues that existed more than 9 years ago which was partially broken by Windows 8.1 and later, as well the recent shutdown of the DRM website (ActControl), and the poor quality of the game alongside the publisher, Akella has gone bankrupt. The game can still be obtained from several other websites and via retail (or resellers).
Development
Development of Postal III was started back in 2006 when RWS (Running With Scissors), the developer of Postal series, makes a deal with Akella (known for publishing the Russian version of 
Left 4 Dead and 
Left 4 Dead 2, and unofficially called as EA of the Russia because they have known for publishing games (mainly made in US) for Russian market) to develop Postal III which would begin in 2007, which initially built on the beta version of 
Source 2007 engine after licensing it from 
Valve. The development went initially well, however later in 2008, the Great Recession has just occurs in most countries, including Russia (where Akella was founded), along with many other companies affected. This has led to Akella making several bad decisions such as firing the Postal III Beta team (known as A-Team) which ultimately making the game development being transferred to Trashmasters (a subsidiary of Akella), working under as B-Team, they later upgrading the game engine to 
Source 2009, implementing 
Nvidia PhysX and years later, the team was fired with the development of the game being frozen until 2010 that C-Team picked it up and continued development, then later fired as well, and finally, the development was picked up again for the last time by D-Team, polishing the title before releases, which they soon are also responsible for creating post-release patches.
Due to this reasons, Postal III have been shifted both in style and design from what was originally envisioned by RWS. The free roaming element of missions were still in development around late 2008, before the decision was made to make the game linear outside Free Roam mode (as the Source Engine didn't support level streaming despite Valve at the time claiming it would, according to Akella).
The game was also planned to be released for the 
Xbox 360 and 
PlayStation 3 consoles[1], as well having 
macOS and 
Linux ports[1], which would have make POSTAL III being the first Source engine game to support Linux systems before Source 2013 update in all Valve games prior to Left 4 Dead, but they are cancelled possibly due to the reasons above, the same thing applies to Multiplayer mode.
Akella was facing bankruptcy at the time, sought to ship the game in a desperate attempt to make money, which ultimately didn't work out (see below).
Release
By November 2011, Postal III was released in Russia, only with physical copy (Retail). Later in December 2011, it was released anywhere else on both Retail and Steam, for Windows systems only.
It is critically slammed with a score of 24 on Metacritic, and with Mostly Negative reviews on Steam by many of the POSTAL fans, making it the worst ever game in the POSTAL franchises and the worst commercially released Source engine game ever made. The game, and it's engine also riddled with bugs, glitches, broken achievements and crashes, with the bad/unfitting gameplay mechanics like Karma Meter and terrible story that wasn't as good like previous POSTAL games whatsoever. The D-Team at Trashmasters, after saw the criticism of the game, they trying their best to patching the game by adding and restoring missing features that previous POSTAL games had, fixing some bugs and restoring some of the open-world elements under Free Roam mode, and removing the songs that Akella didn't licensed it, then finally, later got fired shortly before Akella was shut down.
Running With Scissors (RWS) has retconned the game several months later by removing the game on their store (except Steam and other retailers), then Postal III page on RWS having a notice added to apologize to the POSTAL fans and telling what happened to the development of Postal III, and finally, releasing Postal 2: Paradise Lost which featured a easter eggs that mocked Postal 3.
In addition to that, RWS also beg people to not buying and playing the game due to many reasons above.
As of today, the game is currently still broken and suffered from many crashes, poor engine optimization and other bugs, beside, it's was officially unplayable and it's DRM partially broken on Windows 8.1 and later (only with 
acpc.exe activation executable, works fine on p3.exe however) alongside ActControl DRM servers is no longer available unless they either:
- Install the unofficial NoDRM patch
- This will remove the partially broken DRM and allows you to play the game, plus allow some third-party applications to inject the game executable (
p3.exe) with programs such as debugger, post-processing injectors like ReShade, etc..., and allows more third-party mods, at the cost of more instability and crashes (by throwing grenades). - Using alternative DRM servers (via StarForce ProActive)
- This will result in better stability of the game, and resolve some of the down-sides of the NoDRM fix mentioned above.
See this PCGW page of Postal III for how to activate the game with new DRM servers. However, some crashes like throwing grenades will still happen sometimes. The game can be also crashed by simply injecting certain programs (such as debugger like WinDbg) into the game executable, which triggered the DRM's anti-tamper.
Visit StarForce ProActive website here to generate the key.
Confirm: The Zoom Platform release is DRM-free (cracked with permission of series developer, RWS); does this have the same bugs as the NoDRM patch?
Game Description from Steam store page
Good or Insane? The choice is yours. Following the Apocalyptic end to the Postal Dude’s week in Paradise, we follow him and his insane pitbull Champ as they emigrate to its appropriately named sister city, Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the Global Economic Meltdown, psychotic left-wing “Green” extremism and hypocritical Government corruption, it turns out Catharsis isn’t a much better place to live. What path will you choose when faced with the antics of a hypocritical scheming Mayor? A berserk cartoon mascot with Al Qaeda ties? A former Vice-President’s cadre of Eco-Zealots? How about Gay Segway “biker” gangs, and a sociopathic cult leader Uncle with nuclear ambitions? Will you give in to your base instincts and fight fire with gasoline? Or will you rise above it to become something more, to serve and protect your fellow citizens from the rampant insanity of our modern society? Key features:
- Edgy, satirical Running With Scissors sense of humor
- A world of twisted parody inspired by real people, events and philosophies
- Large, detailed, interactive environments
- Crazy POSTAL style Vehicle gameplay
- NPC’s react to your behavior in a variety of surprising ways
- Multiple story paths determined by your behavior
- Celebrity characters: Super porn star Ron Jeremy, Village People Cowboy Randy Jones, Internationally hated film director Uwe Boll and Playboy Playmate Jennifer Walcott
- Appearances by other popular Running With Scissors character franchises: Krotchy, Champ and the Postal Babes, who will fight along side you (or sometimes against you!)
- Insane new gameplay including the Helper Monkey, Grenade Cats and the BadgerSaw
- Kill Uwe Boll! (or save him!)
Content
- Main Files (.exe, dlls and
binfolder) - Postal III Content (
p3) - Postal III English (
p3_english) - Postal III Russian (
p3_russian) - Modified version of Source 2009 engine branch with NVIDIA PhysX
Technical Info
Warning:Attempting to load most Postal III maps on other Source engine games can crash the game. Some maps may able to load on other games through.Trivia
- A incomplete pre-alpha? version (runs on beta version of Source 2007) of the game (shown on this gameplay video and in Igormir 2007) from mid to late 2007 was leaked in 2020, which also includes content from Beta versions of
Team Fortress 2 and 
Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The leaked build of TF2 was corrupted, but others like Half-Life 2: Episode Two was probably fully playable. See the Postal III - Prototype page and this TF2 build from June 2007 in TCRF for more information.
External Links
- Official Website on Running with Scissors (Archived, 2020)
- Official Website - News (Archived, 2012)
- Official Website on Akella (Archived)
- Alternative DRM servers to activate the game
- DRM Patch (required for some mods to work properly, and to use injectors such as debugger, ReShade and etc... This may cause grenade crashes, however, see fix below).
- Postal III SDK
- SourceMod template to create mods based off Postal III & Grenade crash fix
- The game can still be crashed by throwing grenades, even with this patch installed, albeit much rarer.
- Steam Store page
- ModDB page of Postal III
See Also
References
- From Akella official website of Postal 3:
Postal III is an edgy third-person action/adventure comedy for Xbox 360/PS3/PC/Mac/Linux
| ||||||||
