A sequel to the open-world game Bully was apparently in the works but scrapped after over a year of development. Developed by Rockstar Games, who recently announced a PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2, the original Bully saw players taking on the role of a young man named Jimmy as he explored the fictional Bullworth Academy, a boarding school in England, while making friends and enemies with jocks, nerds, and homeless karate teachers.

While not as great a success as Rockstar’s more popular franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Bully developed a cult following over the next few years and even received a special edition titled Bully: Scholarship Edition. Although recent GTA Online rumors have hinted that a sequel to Bully might be under development, unfortunately reports have now surfaced which seemingly show this is not the case.

According to VGC, who cite multiple sources as being knowledgeable of the game’s development, a script for Bully 2 was written by Dan Houser and a small team of developers in 2008, two years after the game’s initial release. After development of the first Red Dead Redemption game was completed, a group of Rockstar New England employees reportedly spent somewhere between a year and eighteen months working on Bully’s sequel, going as far as to create a small-but-working build of the title.

“It was playable,” one of VGC’s sources said, also confirming that the Bully 2 tech demo was created in the RAGE engine, Rockstar’s own game engine used in the Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and Max Payne series. Although the game’s tech build functioned, the entire project suffered from a lack of adequate momentum, with developmental drive simply “fizzling out” out over time. The team at Rockstar New England was eventually moved to other projects and the Bully 2 sequel was abandoned.

After so many confirmed fake Bully 2 rumors the news of the game at one point existing is not entirely surprising, but given the dedicated fans Rockstar has accrued over the years it’s odd they would abandon something so many of them clearly wanted and have been consistently asking for. With the release of Rockstar’s game launcher, which features a PC version of Bully: Scholarship Edition as one of it’s games for sale, and the numerous references to the franchise still found in GTA Online and Red Dead Redemption, it appears like the developer wants to keep Bully fresh in player’s minds. While one version of a sequel may have been scrapped, it’s never too late for Rockstar to build something new from the ground up.

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Source: VGC