Take-Two cancelled $53 million mystery superhero game from Mafia team
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Something has been semi-officially canned by Take-Two, the parent company of 2K, Rockstar and more. Their financials have been reported for their second quarter and outside of a 3% rise in revenue, there’s something more interesting amongst the papers.
Speaking with GamesBeat‘s Dean Takahashi, the CEO of Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, mentioned that “certain titles would not make it.”
“When we talked about our robust pipeline, over a multi-year period, we did say that certain titles would not make it. And this was one of them,” Zelnick said. “There’s not much else to say, ultimately. We devoted a lot of time and resources to the property. Our standards are incredibly high. We’re trying to build tentpole franchises. And in certain instances, we don’t have the confidence that something will reach that level of excellence, and therefore we can’t proceed.”
Source: VentureBeat/GamesBeat
Jason Schrier of Bloomberg has actually reported that the game – codenamed Volt – was actually the one cancelled. From Hangar 13, the studio behind the Mafia series and its remasters, the game would have featured superheroes in an online space.
Meanwhile, Jeff Grubb, insider and from GamesBeat, also weighed in, describing the game as “Cthulu meets Saints Row”. Another tweet also does ‘the quick math’ that states the publisher was going to show this game off at some point this year.
It’d been in development since 2017 and was hindered by not only COVID, but technical issues. The studio is to meet on Thursday about the future.
While Schrier and his sources aren’t sure about the state of the studio’s wellbeing after a massive cancellation, the team were recently at a conference focused on hiring new developers.
The rumours circling was that this $53 million game was actually Bully 2, Rockstar’s long awaited sequel to the hit PS2 title that caused a stir amongst bored parents and government drones back in the mid-00s, as it brought the concept of a Grand Theft Auto to a much, much younger audience, but instead of guns and strip clubs, it was slingshots and attending classes.
However in a twist of fate, this was false, as reports have been denied by Jason Schrier. On the ResetEra forum, he categorically denied that this was the case and appears to be seeking the answer in a follow up report.
