Investigation exposes cancellation of Bully 2 and Rockstar's mistreatment of employees

One developer claimed that they were never provided any kind of explanation for the layoff. Bully 2 was in production at one point, according to five former Rockstar New England employees, but it was sidelined in favor of other, more troublesome projects in development, such as "Max Payne 3" and "Red Dead Redemption," and was eventually scrapped back in 2009. This is partly due to Rockstar's acquisition of Mad Doc.

Bully 2
"Rockstar New England wanted to be sort of the golden child in the Rockstar thing, but it’s really hard when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time," one developer says. "Living in the shadows of someone who casts a big shadow like Rockstar North, and trying to usurp that role, it’s really difficult and nearly impossible. But man, did they try. Oh, did they try." Rockstar New England’s plan for Bully 2 was in line with the vision of a new Rockstar game being like an event, according to developers on the project. It was a chance to let the Bully series sit alongside Rockstar games of the time, such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. It was a chance, as one former developer recalls, to "shoot for the moon because even if we don’t quite make it, we’re already much further than if we had aimed a little bit lower." "There was a lot of focus on character, very deep systems, seeing how far we could push that, and putting it up there alongside a GTA," one developer on the project says. "I think that they wanted to bring that kind of world to the Bully universe," another says.

For Rockstar New England, this meant expanding and deepening the universe of Bully 2 beyond the scope of the previous game — and investing a significant amount of time and money in the process. Although news outlets such as Game Informer were unable to obtain a precise number of employees working on the project, three sources claim that at one point or another, practically the entire studio worked on Bully 2, with overall headcount estimates ranging from 50 to 70 individuals.

The game's open-world map wouldn't have been as large as, say, Grand Theft Auto IV, according to three distinct creators, but their estimates on its planned scope range from the size of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's open world to "three times" the size of the original Bully's school area. What it would have lacked in overall size it would have made up for with depth. For example, Rockstar New England planned to make every building in the game enterable, either by normal means or by forced entry. "If you could see it, you could go into it," one former developer on the project said. "The player was not going to be driving a car anywhere, so the total playable space and land size was definitely going to be smaller," another developer says. "Mostly because kids – he’s not going to be driving – and also because we wanted these very deep systems. Like, if you can go into every building, that’s a lot of work. We’d rather not have a really massive world; maybe scale that back a little bit just so that we can make sure that we have all these meaningful things in there."

Rockstar New England was exploring with ways to make the player's actions more important than in past Rockstar games, bolstered by the studio's artificial intelligence expertise. Consider the honor system in the first Red Dead Redemption. When protagonist John Marston assists a non-player character, his honor rating improves. However, if the player instructs Marston to commit crimes, Marston's honor is shattered. While this has an impact on how NPCs react to Marston in the real world, specific NPCs do not remember his acts.

In Bully 2, however, Rockstar New England was trying to develop ways for characters to remember Jimmy, for there to be good and bad consequences for his actions. "We really wanted to make sure that people remembered what you did, so if you pulled a prank on your neighbor, they’d remember it," says one developer. "That your actions had more meaning beyond a 20-foot radius and the five-second memories of the non-playable characters near you." Parts of this system can be seen in Red Dead Redemption II, two developers reported. Players see changes in protagonist Arthur Morgan’s behavior based on his honor. If Morgan has high honor, he’s a more compassionate character. If Morgan has low honor, he’s driven by greed and apathy. Similarly, if Morgan robs a store, he can’t just walk back into it a few minutes later as if nothing happened. The store clerk remembers Morgan and denies him service, asking him to leave.

"The way that you interact with other characters in the world, more than just with your gun or with your fist, they have some sense of memory – a lot of that stuff originated in Bully 2," one developer said. “From what I remember reading in some of the design docs and my conversations with people is that you could build relationships with characters in the world," he says about Bully 2. "You’d be, like, best friends with the chef in the mansion or whatever, or the chef could really hate you or something, and that would open up different options. I don’t know to the extent of where that ended up – if that got pared down into a general ‘you’re good Jimmy’ versus ‘you’re bad Jimmy’ or what – but I know in some of the early ideas being thrown around, you would have that fine-grained level of relationships to other characters in the world."

Beyond the game’s open world, developers describe a breadth of different interactivity options and new features. One detail recalled by two developers was a progressive grass-growing system, where grass throughout the world would grow realistically and players could see individual blades. "You could go and mow the lawn, and then it would actually be lower. You could actually do a good job, go back and forth, and create lines on people’s lawns, that kind of thing." "It sounds so silly, but it was something that we were all excited about because of the technology behind it," another developer says of the grass-growing mechanic.

Because Rockstar New England wanted to give players the option to break into houses, the team developed a new glass fragmentation system, new tech made for Bully 2 that hadn't been used in prior Rockstar games – though it’d find its way into later titles. "If you’ve played Max Payne 3 and you shot some glass, instead of just the glass breaking the same way every time, we had built this whole system so that this chunk right near the impact of the first bullet would break out, and you would see a little spiderweb of glass,” one developer says. "Then if you shot some more of the glass, little individual chunks near where you actually shot would fall out. It made it look realistic."

Multiple people on the project describe an in-depth climbing mechanic planned for the game. When exploring the open world, Jimmy would be able to climb trees, fences, and ledges, on top of roofs, as well as out of his window when sneaking out. “Trees were obviously a big one; we wanted the player to be able to climb up the tree to hide or do some hijinks with all sorts of things like paintball guns or water balloons, all of that sort of stuff,” a former developer says. "We worked with a lot of GTA assets just so that we could get something prototyped quickly," one developer says about the climbing. "We tried to work a lot of that in. It’s like, Well, when he’s hanging for this long, how long does he hang for before he lets go? Do we wanna do a foot-over-foot balancing act if you’re walking along a branch? Versus side stepping, side to side, if you were working along the branch but to the side? It was stuff like that, and trying to figure out what worked, or what looked the best as the player."

Housing these new features was a vertical slice of Bully 2 that Rockstar New England had up and running. According to four developers at the studio and one person at Rockstar’s New York City headquarters, Bully 2 was playable. Developers could run around the world and interact with objects and non-player characters, and there were some missions – such as one involving go-karts, another with a beekeeper, a Kamp Krusty-style mission, and one that had Jimmy in his underwear, even featuring a crotch bulge.

As one developer on the project recalls, the team had mapped out all the terrain for the game’s world. Additionally, NPCs were walking around doing various day-to-day tasks. Buildings and houses within the game were also starting to become feature-complete, though he points out that they weren’t in a shippable form yet. "The game was at least six to eight hours playable," says Marc Anthony Rodriguez, a former game analyst for Rockstar’s New York City headquarters and one of the project leads on Bully: Scholarship Edition. "So, fully rendered, fully realized."

Two developers estimate that if development had continued, Bully 2 would have taken another two to three years or more to be ready for release. But those years never came. Over time, Rockstar began removing people from the project and reassigning them to other in-development games that required assistance. For the developers, once someone was removed from Bully 2, they never returned.

Higher-ups at Rockstar have talked several times about their interest in the series, but nothing has come of it. And while the build cannot be accessed, the concept art of Bully 2 was leaked to Twitter.

Mistreatment
During this interview, the former developers confirmed a lot of mistreatment behind the scenes of Rockstar.

In April 2008, Rockstar announced it had acquired Mad Doc Software for an undisclosed amount and renamed the studio Rockstar New England. Speaking in a news release announcing the acquisition, Rockstar co-founder and president Sam Houser said that making Mad Doc a Rockstar studio would "enhance our core technology and further support our commitment to creating progressive and innovative gaming experiences."

At first, Mad Doc was excited about this given how much of an inspiration Rockstar was to gaming. However, this eagerness to work for Rockstar started to fall apart as some say that they gradually started to see Mad Doc’s workplace culture disappear after the acquisition, and that crunch became a more prevalent issue within the studio once it was under the Rockstar banner. A former developer did confirm that there was some crunch during the development of Empire Earth 3, but it was "handled well".

Shortly after Rockstar purchased Mad Doc, Rockstar's former vice president of development Jeronimo Barrera visited the studio. Barrera was there to field employee questions but left some feeling uneasy about their new employer.

"One of the first red flags was when someone asked about hours and weekends and stuff like that," the developer recalls. "Jeronimo’s answer was something to the effect of, ‘Well, we don’t work every weekend.’ He's like, ‘For example, I’m not working this Saturday.’ The emphasis on the word ‘every,’ and then ‘this,’ were a little disquieting in their effect." (In 2019, a report from Kotaku detailed Barrerra's reputation within Rockstar, citing multiple employees describing him as "abrasive" and "volatile." One employee also accused Barrera of sexual assault while working at Rockstar. Barrera categorically denied all of the allegations of misconduct.)

According to a developer, while making Max Payne 3 they would describe it as "endless" with months-long crunch periods where they’d have to work late into the night and on weekends, sometimes between 12- and 16-hour days. They also made mention of how it was breaking people quickly.

"I know that it won game of the year, and that was great and satisfying, but the approach to development was just – it was ridiculous. It took no one’s life outside of work into account."

As some developers described it, they felt they were expected by other people within the company to prove their dedication to Rockstar through long hours, and that they would be "harassed" when trying to leave the studio. "When it came time for you to leave, it was a lot of just trying to get out without being harassed on the way out of the door."

"I saw people that previously I really liked become just sycophantic. And then there was the whole ‘bodies in chairs’ thing, you know? You don’t have work to do, but you’re going to be here on the weekend, because there’s some studio head that’s going to be walking around. This doesn’t even get into the off-work hours stuff where it was just – it was like a hardworking frat house. There is an age and a person that is really drawn to that. Rockstar, in my opinion, is well aware of this."

In June 2009, Rockstar New England went through a sizable layoff. Sources within the studio told Kotaku that "at least 10 percent of the studio" had been let go. This included the entirety of the quality assurance department, as Rockstar shifted all of its QA to a dedicated studio. Members of the studio’s art team and other departments were also let go. Outlets reported that Rockstar would help those affected find new jobs. According to 3D artist Tim Samuels, that didn't happen; none of them received bonuses for their work. “We didn’t even get a copy of the game,” Samuels says.

One developer recalled how they were never given an explanation to the layoff at any point.

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