untrue, Pachter apologized to Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, calling the sequel a "possibility". During the development of Bully: Scholarship Edition, Mad Doc Studios was acquired by Rockstar in April 2008 and renamed to Rockstar New England. As Rockstar New England, the studio finished off Bully: Scholarship Edition as well as assisted Rockstar's other studios in supporting the DLC content for Grand Theft Auto IV, and in support of Red Dead Redemption. Near the end of this period, Rockstar had greenlit early production on Bully 2 at Rockstar New England. Rockstar New England had created a vision for Bully 2 that aligned with Rockstar's larger direction in developing games with higher prestige, which had started with GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire, incorporating new narratives and technology to make it a more character-driven game. According to former Rockstar New England employees speaking to Game Informer, the entire studio of between 50 and 80 employees had been working on Bully 2 at one point, developing it as an open-world game with a map three times the size from the original Bully and approaching the size of the world in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; while the map did not have the scale of GTA IV, the developers were planning several deep systems that would make the map feel bigger, such as having many more buildings that could be entered on the map. Rockstar New England also planned to incorporate more artificial intelligence in the game so that player choices would have more impact later in the game. Several other new technology systems were developed by the studio, which ended up in games such as Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. By around 2009, Rockstar New England had developed a playable vertical slice of the game in place with working versions of these new systems which they presented to Rockstar as a project milestone. Former developers stated this had about six to eight hours of content, consistent with other Rockstar projects, and was about two to three years from a final version. Though Rockstar did not state anything directly, something had changed in the studio's attitude according to former developers, leading up to Rockstar laying off about 10% of Rockstar New England in June 2009, and in 2010 they started pulling staff working on Bully 2 onto supporting projects from other Rockstar studios, effectively cancelling further development on