The mail sent to a video game publisher

The amazing mail sent to a video game publisher

An old Activision idea from the 1980s has led to some incredible things in the 2020s for Panic, the publisher of Despelote, Arco and Time Flies: “The range of things we received was wild."

Some time last year, a person put a dead fly in an envelope and mailed it to the game publisher Panic.

That was intentional.

So was the wedding invitation sent by another player of Panic’s games. And so was the missive that included a recipe for peanut butter cookies.

But the child’s tooth that came in the mail this past January? That was an accident.

“Thank you for everything you do making the little yellow boxes of joy!” a gamer named Joe wrote on a small card, praising Panic’s tiny, square Playdate gaming system. Also in the envelope was a small tooth.

Since mid-2024, Panic had been receiving bundles of mail from players of several Panic-published games, including the British comedy Thank Goodness You’re Here and the South American adventure Arco, as well as users of the Playdate.

The mail has arrived in piles, turning part of Panic’s office in Portland, Oregon into what the company’s head of marketing, Kaleigh Stegman, told Game File “feels like a Christmas mailroom.”

It’s all the result of a customer rewards program that has turned unexpectedly rewarding for Panic and its game makers themselves, as fans send expressions of their appreciation for Panic’s games.

“The range of things we received was wild,” Stegman said.

An Arco player mailed in needlepoint crafts featuring that game’s characters.

A Despelote player sent a drawing of them playing the game.

A Thank Goodness You’re Here player sent in an actual iPod Nano with a custom playlist, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser told me, when I interviewed him about the mail-in program.

Stegman sorts through most of the mail and has developed a system to manage at least a dozen more envelopes that each day. She’s also processed thousands of return mailings of special game-themed patches.

It was Stegman who, in late January, found the tooth in one of the mailings sent in for a reward. That one was puzzling.

The note that the tooth-mailer had sent ended with the sentence: “It’s amazing what a community has sprouted!”

For a moment, Stegman wondered if the word “sprouted” was a reference to the tooth. But that seemed like a stretch.

Panic’s rewards program involves the company sending something back—a patch—in a self-addressed stamped envelope, so Stegman was able to include the tooth with the return mailing. “You lost your tooth (?!) again!” she wrote on a purple square of paper.

In late February, the person replied, mortified. They’d just grabbed a random envelope for the mailing, they explained. They hadn’t realized their kid’s tooth was in it. They were very sorry.

Stegman and the Panic team were fine with it. The tooth was another delightful surprise in what has been an unexpectedly joyful project.

Panic’s mail-in program was inspired by an old promotional program in the 1980s from game publisher Activision. Long before it was making Call of Duty or Tony Hawk games, Activision was producing Pitfall, Kaboom and River Raid. And it was offering to send players special patches for their jacket or bag, if they sent the publisher photographic proof of their achievements in specific games.

“It’s neat that they built that connection with players,” Sasser remembered thinking. “And what a cool feeling that, when you beat a game, there’s a little something extra that you get.”

Panic could do something like that, too, he figured.

They could put a web address in their games’ end credits and invite players who cleared their games to send in a self-addressed stamped envelope. But Sasser worried that it might be hard for some of their players.

“We realized there are a lot of people who will want to do this who have never sent a letter in their entire lives,” Sasser said

Panic chatted with James Carbutt, artist for Thank Goodness You’re Here, who quickly drew an instructional comic strip that would load in a browser when players typed out the link they found in the credits.

Carbutt added an unrequested element: In one panel, he encouraged people to “include a note to the devs.”

Over the last two years, players who have completed Thank Goodness You’re Here, Arco, Herdling and other Panic games have discovered the link in the credits, loaded the comic up and taken its encouragement to send a note with their stamped envelope.

One person who played Despelote told the game’s developers via a hand-written note that they hadn’t been able to play soccer in over a decade because of health issues. The game had reminded them of what they’d loved, and they were grateful.

Another thanked the game’s developers for representing their native Ecuador so well.

Another player wrote in to joke that Thank Goodness You’re Here had saved their marriage and cleared their skin. More seriously, it had led to some fun date nights, they said.

Players often wrote in saying the game they’d completed the game in question with a friend or family member, that it helped them strengthen a bond.

One person sent a note that they wrote with marker on a receipt.

Another wrote their note on a gum wrapper.

“My favorite one was, ‘I’m sorry for pirating the game, here’s $20,’” Stegman said.

Yes, some people send money.

Someone invited the developers of Blippo+ to their wedding (no word on whether the devs will attend).

Someone included a glitter bomb that exploded into glitter when Stegman opened their envelope. Was that one a troll? “I received it positively,” she said.

“We didn’t know that we were going to get stuff like this,” Sasser said. “We really thought we were gonna get a blank envelope, and we would put a patch in and return it. And I think, when James made that single panel in the comic that just says, include a note to the devs, that opened this crazy and incredible door to people.”

Along with the comic strip, the webpage players access asks them to include their gamer handle from Steam, Switch, etc. It notes that Panic reserves the right to check their profile to confirm they’ve finished the game. No patches for non-completists!

The response has shocked Sasser, Stegman and the rest of Panic, in the warmth and creativity of the notes players have sent and in the sheer volume of replies.

In the first month of this project, back in 2024, Stegman estimated that they got over a thousand pieces of mail. Panic’s local postal delivery worker has joked that the publisher is keeping him employed, Sasser said.

But there have been a postal learning curve for Panic, too. International postage has been tricky for players, so Panic handles that.

They also had to scuttle an early idea that was over-stuffing envelopes. The first game in this program was the British comedy Thank Goodness You’re Here, so Panic originally tried to send players actual tea bags. Some of those were returned to sender.

“Thickness of envelope is like a big deal with the postal service, if you’re doing a regular first class letter,” Sasser said.

Stegman is confident that plenty did reach their destination. She went through a box of 400 tea bags, she said, and didn’t get that many back.