[STEAM] Bully Online Mod Creators Insist Shutting the Project Down 'Was Not Something We Wanted'

[Steam 0]

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Cast your mind back to the end of last year, and you may remember we reported that a group of volunteer modders had

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(also known as Canis Canem Edit in some parts of the world). Fast-forward just a few short months later, however, and now the Bully online project is "shutting down forever."

Bully was a humorous action game that put players in the role of high school outcast Jimmy while attending a pretentious private school. Fans have long called for a sequel,

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, and while Bully 2 was obviously never released, some of its ideas made it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption 2.

Though the game was developed to be a single-player experience, the mod, which has been in development for years and fully released only last month, allowed players to team up for minigames, roleplay, compete in racing, and face off against NPCs, instantly drawing the attention of fans… and IP owner Rockstar, it seems.

"Coming with sad news today," wrote one of the **** Pigeon Development team on the project's Discord. "The Bully Online project is shutting down forever, which unfortunately means all the following is going to happen in 24 hours."

The post reported that the Bully Online server would shut down, development of Bully Online scripts would stop, the source code would disappear, and all webpages referencing it would be removed, along with the launcher (which has seemingly already happened). All Bully Online account data will also be "permanently deleted" and even Discord channels related to the mod are getting nuked.

The team held off on detailing why this was happening, only confirming that lead dev SWEGTA hopes to upload an explanatory video to his

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channel. "For now, though, know this was not something we wanted," the statement added.

Rockstar parent company Take-Two has a history of clamping down on fan projects, although after it acquired

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FiveM and RedM back in 2023, it was felt a change in approach might have been in place. In fact, just yesterday (January 14), we reported that Rockstar had

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... which could be the issue, as some players suggest.

"I think we all know the reason, it's got everything to do with Rockstar's new CFX launch mod site where they make more greedy profit for [publisher] Take-Two Interactive by putting pay-walls on mods,"

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one unhappy player. "I expect more mods to be shut down as the months go on with this new CFX marketplace."

That said, as this

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points out, Bully Online was already effectively paywalled to donors of the project, which is widely frowned upon across the modding space. "Not surprising at all," they said. "Dude was pretty much asking to get shutdown the moment he paywalled early access to this."

As for if there'll ever be an official Bully 2? Dan Houser, Rockstar Games co-founder and the writer behind the studio's biggest games, including the

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and

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series, recently sat down for

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, revealing

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Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at

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