The Rise and Sudden Fall of Bully Online
Bully Online was an ambitious fan project that aimed to bring full online multiplayer to Rockstar's classic school themed game Bully. For PC gamers who love mods, it sounded like a dream. The mod promised new systems, multiplayer features, and all kinds of extra content built on top of the original game.
When it first appeared in late 2025, Bully Online immediately grabbed attention. The idea of turning a single player school sim into an online playground with racing, minigames, and even wild modes like rat based deathmatch was exciting. It pushed the limits of what a mod could do with an older PC game.
However, there was a catch. Access to the initial release was restricted to players who supported the team through their Ko Fi page. In other words, the core mod was effectively paywalled behind donations. For many in the modding and PC gaming community, this raised a red flag. Charging for mods built on top of a commercial game can attract the wrong kind of attention from publishers and rights holders.
Those concerns did not take long to materialize. Just about one month after the mod launched to paying players, everything was shut down.
The Shutdown And What It Tells Us
The project lead, YouTuber and modder Swegta, posted a short statement on his website announcing that Bully Online was shutting down. The original project page disappeared. The Mod DB page for the mod was also taken down and now only survives through the Internet Archive.
A more detailed message appeared on the Bully Online Discord server, explaining exactly what would happen within 24 hours:
- The official Bully Online server hosted on swegta.com would be shut down
- Development of scripts for Bully Online would stop
- The source code would be removed from the website
- All webpages related to Bully Online would be deleted
- The launcher downloads would be taken down
- All Bully Online account data would be permanently deleted
The team did not immediately confirm the exact reason for the shutdown. They said that a future video from Swegta would explain the details and made it clear that the decision was not voluntary. From the wording and the total removal of code, servers, and data, it strongly suggests that they received a formal legal demand, very likely a cease and desist from Rockstar or parent company Take Two.
For long time PC gamers and modders, this pattern feels familiar. Take Two has a history of aggressively protecting its intellectual property when it believes fan projects go too far. There have been past reports of private investigators being sent to talk to modders working on projects that the company did not approve of. When money becomes part of the equation, especially when it involves altering or extending a commercial game in a major way, publishers are much more likely to step in.
Even without official confirmation, the complete wipeout of Bully Online including source code and account systems is a strong sign that this was not simply a team burnout or quiet cancellation. It looks like a forced shutdown from the top.
Rockstar, Mods, And The Future Of Fan Projects
The situation with Bully Online is not as simple as Rockstar or Take Two hating mods. In fact, their relationship with the modding scene has become more complicated in recent years.
On the one hand, they have taken hard action against some high profile projects. On the other, Rockstar has also embraced certain mod communities when it fits into their long term plans. In 2023 the company actually bought the teams behind major projects like FiveM and RedM, which are popular custom multiplayer frameworks for Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption on PC. These tools essentially became semi official platforms for custom content.
More recently Rockstar launched its own official mods marketplace for Grand Theft Auto. This is part of a broader strategy that looks a bit like Roblox, where user creations can exist inside a controlled, monetized ecosystem. In that world, unofficial large scale projects that charge money or use online infrastructure outside Rockstar's control can easily be seen as competition or legal risk.
That is what makes Bully Online such a flashpoint for PC gaming and modding discussions. It raises important questions for the future of ambitious fan projects:
- How far can a mod go before it stops being a mod and starts looking like an unlicensed online service?
- Is it ever safe to accept money for access to a mod that fundamentally alters how a commercial game runs?
- Will more publishers push creators toward official marketplaces instead of independent mod distribution?
For PC gamers, the shutdown of Bully Online is disappointing. The idea of transforming a classic single player game into a fully online experience is exactly the kind of experiment that makes PC gaming special. But it is also a reminder that the more a project looks like a separate product or service, and the more it tries to monetize itself, the higher the legal risk becomes.
Going forward, modders who want to create large scale online experiences or accept money from supporters will likely have to be even more careful. Sticking to free distribution and avoiding anything that resembles selling access to a modified version of a publisher's game is usually safer. At the same time, the growth of official tools and marketplaces means some of the most successful projects may end up working directly with publishers instead of staying completely independent.
Bully Online may be gone, but the questions it raises about ownership, creativity, and control in PC gaming are not going away anytime soon.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/bully-online-the-ambitious-mod-that-brought-multiplayer-and-more-to-rockstars-classic-school-sim-shuts-down-a-month-after-launch-this-was-not-something-we-wanted/
