5 Games That Fans Keep Alive Without Sequels

Generally, if a video game is good, it’s turned into a series. After all, developers spend a ton of time spinning up a new IP, and moving onto something new without giving a rabid fanbase a second (or third game) almost feels wasteful. You already have something fans want, so why move on without listening to those demands? Many developers do exactly that, and because they aren’t creating something brand-new, that second game is often more refined around player desires.

However, sometimes a massive community gathers around a game, thinking it’s only the start of a series, only for the developer to move on without a sequel. It’s rare, but the list of games below proves that developers are still making the puzzling choice to leave plenty of meat on the table. Here are five games that developers abandoned despite having tons of community support.

5) The Simpsons: Hit & Run

This 2003 action-adventure game from Radical Entertainment isn’t just the best Simpsons game that’s ever been made; it’s also one of the best Grand Theft Auto-likes of its generation. Hit & Run took the racing gameplay from The Simpsons: Road Rage and expanded it into a giant open world filled with things to do.

And that world is an almost perfect recreation of Springfield. If you ever wanted to jump into the world of The Simpsons, there’s no better way to do it. Long before South Park: The Stick of Truth essentially gave gamers a new season of the hit show, Hit & Run basically did that exact same thing.

Unfortunately, a planned sequel never materialized because Hit & Run‘s publisher, Vivendi, decided not to renew the license for The Simpsons. Which is wild, because Hit & Run sold north of 8 million copies in its lifetime. Thankfully, fans have kept it alive thanks to a 2021 leak of Hit & Run‘s source code.

4) Sleeping Dogs

We’re sticking in the land of Grand Theft Auto-likes. Sleeping Dogs takes that general formula from Rockstar’s cash cow, and infuses it with combat that’s actually fun and a leveling system that lets you build your own version of protagonist Wei Shen.

The combat is where Sleeping Dogs shines. As an undercover policeman in Hong Kong who also trains in martial arts, Shen has access to all kinds of impactful moves with his fists, feet, and gun. Every attack has real impact behind it, turning Shen into a brutal fighting machine who will remind players of Bruce Wayne in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Although Sleeping Dogs seemed like a success to everyone outside of Square Enix, the publisher announced that it failed to meet its sales expectations. Work was started on both a sequel and a spin-off, but neither game ever saw the light of day. That said, it was revealed in 2025 that the long-in-development film adaptation has a completed script, so it might actually be released in the near future.

3) Bully

One last open-world GTA-like for the road. However, this one was also made by Rockstar. Bully took Grand Theft Auto‘s open-world action gameplay and translated it to a prestige boarding academy. By putting players in the shoes of a juvenile delinquent, Rockstar gained a lot of pre-release controversy and just as many post-launch sales.

Bully is still one of Rockstar’s best games. It’s a mix of novel campaign missions, class attendance in the form of minigames, and inventive melee combat. While Rockstar might’ve needed to pick a new protagonist for a follow-up, Bully always seemed ripe for a sequel.

After all, it cleaned up in awards and sold well. Fans have been begging Rockstar to return to the series for years, and there was a sequel in development in the early 2010s. However, nothing has ever come from that outside of a remaster. Hopefully, that changes in a post-Grand Theft Auto 6 world, but with Rockstar moving like molasses these days, Bully 2 might never happen.

2) Bloodborne

Bloodborne was a massive success for developer FromSoftware. It took the medieval fantasy from the Dark Souls series and plopped it into a world inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. On top of that, Bloodborne ditched the sword-and-shield combat from its previous games and went all in on speed, making the trip to Yharnam one of FromSoft’s twitchier releases.

Players ate it up, as Bloodborne cruised past 7 million units sold and FromSoft turned it into a franchise with a board game, comic book series, and more. Despite all that, Bloodborne hasn’t even gotten a remake, let alone a sequel.

It’s hard to blame FromSoft for not going back. Everything that’s been released since Bloodborne launched in 2015 has been a hit. Elden Ring is the standout, but Sekiro and Armored Core 6 aren’t slouches either. The studio has too many other projects that don’t require it to work with Sony. That doesn’t mean we won’t see a second Bloodborne someday, but fans will likely be waiting for several years if it does happen.

1) Toontown Online

Consider this a kind of catch-all entry for popular MMOs that died and have been kept alive by the fan community. Toontown Online is the best example of that, but you could also include games like City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies.

Toontown is a strange case. It was a great family game for MMO fans that was published by Disney. It’s got a bright, vibrant look, features light-hearted combat, and has plenty of safety features to help make it welcoming for young players in the relatively early days of the internet.

And Toontown was online for a decade, so it had a solid run, but that wasn’t good enough for its diehard players. Almost immediately after the closure was announced, work began on a fan recreation called Toontown Rewritten. It had its official launch in 2017, and as of 2024, has over 2 million registered users. On top of that, the community still gets together for real-life ToonFest events each year. It’s a great story of a dedicated community preserving a beloved game.

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