Steam dev says kids can't beat game because they don't know how to send email

After Hours is a puzzle game where fans can send an email IRL to get hints, but many people apparently don't know how email actually works

Both Gen Z and Gen Alpha are plagued by accusations of learned helplessness from teachers, parents, and news publications. Now, a game developer claims he's had to deal with a worrying lack of basic life skills among his younger players — and it's negatively affecting the reputation of his Steam game.

After Hours is a 2018 alternate reality game where players scour notes and letters hidden in a computer to solve the mystery of why a scientist went missing thirty years ago. It's a remake of another popular Newgrounds game called 128k that got remade with new puzzles after enjoying a successful Kickstarter campaign. Like any good ARG, After Hours expects players to go beyond the confines of the actual game to uncover its central enigma.

"If you would find yourself in front of an old computer today, and discover something you don't really understand — what would you do?" the official description reads. "Pick up your smartphone and Google, right?"

When it first came out, After Hours wasn't a smash hit, but it did well enough. Despite being a challenging and unconventional game, the reviews were mostly positive early on.

"I don't think this game will be for everyone, but if you enjoy ARG-style puzzles you will find a number of puzzles that will take you beyond what is in front of you," one 2018 review reads. "I found the puzzles to be a little more challenging than I was first expecting, but not a super-long game either."

Anticipating that players might have a hard time, developer Petter Malmehed included a clever hint system. Throughout the experience, fans talk with someone who has an email clearly displayed throughout their correspondence. The intent here is for players to realize that they can send a message to that email in real life as well. The system is set up to recognize keywords in the email, and will use those to send a canned message that will enable players to move forward in the game.

Back in 2018, people seemed to catch on to the conceit quickly. But by 2024, Malmehed says something weird started to happen. Suddenly, the emails coming through didn't have a message at all. Instead, players repeatedly kept typing their entire inquiry into the subject line. The players couldn't figure out how to use email, let alone solve the mystery at the root of the game. The system couldn't help them, because it wasn't designed to read the subject line. Suddenly, After Hours' reviews started trending downward.

"Too hard," one 2024 review declared.

Malmehed tells Polygon the system received around 2,000 emails in 2025 alone. "I’d say about a third of them doesn’t have a body and is subject only," he says. Many of these messages are written in mostly lowercase letters.

"That's something I've noticed a lot of young people are doing these days," Malmehed told Polygon. "So I believe the users are in general pretty young."

Malmehed admits he can only speculate about who is writing the emails. But that speculation dovetails with countless anecdotal accounts of parents and teachers who are exasperated by young people's seeming inability to perform basic administrative tasks. Back in 2024, The Atlantic covered an alarming drop in literacy amongst students at prestigious universities. Late last year, the New York Times explored the worsening of this trend among high-school kids. Over on reddit, teachers complain that the kids they oversee can't do things like read a clock or tie their shoes. Academic researchers have pointed out that the root causes are far more complex than laziness or lack of intelligence. But whether it's a lack of incentives, institutional failures, or knowledge that they can get away with it, the apparent result is the same: Young people are going out into the world without all the skills necessary to succeed.

At first blush, it probably sounds absurd. Why wouldn't so-called iPad kids know how to send email? While the decline in literacy reflects the frictions of a digital audience dealing with the analog and outdated, it turns out that young people are falling behind on technical skills as well. According to one 2023 study described in The Washington Post, "only another 19 percent of the 42,000 students assessed in 14 countries and educational systems could work independently with computers as information-gathering and management tools." Some schools might be outfitted with laptops for every student, but basic skill-development concepts like computer labs and typing classes aren't nearly as prevalent as they once were. No wonder, then, that communities like r/Teachers routinely features posts with titles like, "Do you feel kids don't know how to use computers anymore?"

In recent years, Malmehed says the percentage of players who can actually finish After Hours has cratered. "I think the odd ways of writing the emails is the culprit," Malmehed tells Polygon. "No hints makes the game way too hard.

It’s a very fragile system. I wouldn’t recommend it to other devs out there," he says with a laugh.

Malmehed isn't giving up on reaching new players, though. Though it's not yet implemented, he's exploring ways to make sure his system can flag messages appropriately and dole out the help users need. This isn't about pointing fingers: Malmehed mostly seems bewildered about what might be happening with After Hours players. Even so, he's moving ahead with empathy.

"No form of modern communication requires a subject and a body — it’s easy to see how people [who are] not familiar with email aren’t filling out both fields."