It appears that Rockstar’s long dormant stealth action spy game Agent has finally ceased development. First reported by Eurogamer, Rockstar and its publisher Take-Two Interactive have abandoned the trademark for the game as of November 19 of this year. The US Patent and Trademark Office lists the current status of the trademark as “Abandoned because no Statement of Use or Extension Request timely filed after Notice of Allowance was issued.” Thus, this means the company no longer has plans for the IP.
Agent was first announced over a decade ago in July 2007. The rights for the game were secured by Sony to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive. While name wasn’t given to the at the time, Sony touted it as the “next great franchise” from Rockstar. Sony credited the power of the PlayStation 3’s CELL processor as the reason Rockstar decided to make the exclusive, and considered it a “win-win situation for both companies.” Two years later, at Sony’s E3 press conference, Jack Tretton would take the stage to officially unveil Agent. Tretton said that Rockstar’s newest game “will take a player across the globe amid the shadowy world of espionage and assassins in the darkest hours of the 1970s.” Over the next few years, while nothing would be shown of Agent, Take-Two still claimed that the game was being worked on. In the summer of 2013, Take-Two Interactive went on to register new trademarks for the game. However, no concrete information about the game has been given since.
Since Agent went quiet, Rockstar has achieved meteoric success with its two most recent releases. Grand Theft Auto V has become the most profitable piece of media in history. On top of that, the recently released Red Dead Redemption II had the biggest opening weekend in entertainment history. The work and effort needed for these two massively successful titles to achieve what they have could very well be the reason why Agent never saw the light of day.