An ambitious multiplayer modification called Bully Online, built around Rockstar Games’ open‑world school action title, has been shut down after only a month in early access amid apparent pressure from the game’s rights holder, Take‑Two Interactive.
The project entered early access on December 15. It offered a multiplayer layer for Bully that let players explore the game world together, earn in‑game currency, fend off NPCs, compete in mini‑games and role‑play various characters inside the familiar environment.
The team behind the mod, led by Swedish blogger Swegta, tried to limit legal exposure: the mod required users to own a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition and did not include the game’s original files. The developers viewed those measures as protective — in hindsight, they acknowledge that they perhaps should have been more cautious.
About a month after the early access launch the team announced the project’s closure and scheduled the servers to be taken offline on January 15. The mod’s page on community hosting sites was removed, and the project’s public posts relating to it have since been taken down.
The developers also said they would stop work on new content and scripts, erase the mod’s source code and delete user data gathered by the project.
The team has not given a formal, detailed legal explanation for the shutdown. In a public message they said they did not want this outcome and indicated they would provide further clarification in a statement planned for January 21.
Although the creators did not name a specific complaint, the community widely suspects a takedown request from Take‑Two Interactive, which owns the rights to Bully through Rockstar Games. Take‑Two has a history of aggressively protecting its intellectual property and has previously forced the closure of ambitious fan projects; at the same time, Rockstar and its parent have shown some openness to user content under tightly controlled circumstances, including sanctioned mod initiatives.
The announcement and follow‑up information about the shutdown were first circulated via community channels on Discord.