Bully 2 Plans Confirmed After All These Years

The writer and executive producer behind Red Dead Redemption II, Max Payne 3, and pretty much every Grand Theft Auto game in existence has finally revealed why Rockstar Games has yet to produce a sequel to their beloved 2006 classic Bully.

Spoiler alert: you aren’t going to like the answer.

Bully, or Canis Canem Edit as folks in PAL territories may know it as, was released during a slightly odd period for Rockstar Games.

When the game first dropped on PlayStation 2 back in 2006 (and later in 2008 on the Xbox 360), Rockstar was smaller, and (more importantly) had a lot more freedom.

From 2006 to 2008 alone, Rockstar Games teams would publish several different, unique games, including Bully, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix, Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, and Manhunt 2.

Comparatively, since Red Dead Redemption II dropped in 2018, Rockstar Games (or rather, their publisher, Take-Two Interactive) has published one game: Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition… which was technically developed (prior to its launch, at least) by Grove Street Games.

So what happened, exactly? Why did the studio go from pumping out dozens of weird, unique titles like Bully and Manhunt, to suddenly working solely on Grand Theft Auto? Have games really just taken so long to develop that even a behemoth like Rockstar Games has to invest all of its time into working on one single game?

If you read between the lines, it seems former Rockstar Games executive producer Dan Houser may have given us our answer, and, after all these years, finally confirmed why Bully 2 never happened.

In a recent interview with IGN at the 2025 LA Comic Con, Houser was asked why Rockstar Games didn’t pursue a follow-up to Bully, and, unfortunately, his answer makes a lot of sense.

“I think it was just bandwidth issues… If you've got a small lead creative team and a small senior leadership crew, you just can't do all the projects you want”, Houser revealed.

“How we're structuring Absurd, we're trying to do two projects with a fairly small team, and it's really trying to think through that. How can we do that, and keep them both moving?”

If you read between the lines here, it’s clear that Houser is saying that Rockstar Games wanted to make Bully 2, but their priorities shifted elsewhere.

Grand Theft Auto IV released two years after Bully in 2008, and Red Dead Redemption would drop a couple of years later in 2010.

Their success would mark the beginning of the end for some of Rockstar Games' lesser-known titles, as they essentially morphed into the online-focused, microtransaction-shilling studio that they’re known as today.

Under Take-Two’s leadership, Rockstar Games has been forced to follow the money in the past couple of decades, and unfortunately, that didn’t leave any time to pursue some of their kookier, less-profitable endeavours, like, for instance, Bully 2.