Now, years later, it may come as no surprise that the game that Rockstar’s founder Sam Houser described as the “ultimate action game” appears to be dead. Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, has finally abandoned Agent’s trademark due to “no Statement of Use or Extension Request.”
The story of Agent begins with a tease from Sony dating back to 2007 wherein the company indicated that Rockstar North was working on a new franchise to be available exclusively on PlayStation 3. This was substantiated by an official blog post from Michael Shorrock, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Director of Third-Party Relations, confirming that the companies had indeed “agreed to PlayStation exclusive rights of the next great franchise from Rockstar studios.”
The next details came at the aforementioned E3 2009 where Agent was given its name at Sony’s press conference, and Take-Two confirmed PlayStation exclusively from the developer’s end. Little was revealed about Agent in the following two years aside from intermittent confirmation from Rockstar and Take-Two that the game was still in development. However, something seemed to have changed in these years, as a statement from Sony Interactive’s CEO indicated that Agent’s exclusive release was no longer a sure thing.
Then, at the end of 2011, the world got its first unofficial look at Agent when a Rockstar environmental artist shared renders online. And so it went: increasingly sparse information from Rockstar, Take-Two, and Sony, and occasional image leaks to keep people curious and speculating. This culminated in 2017 with a few final unverified leaks.
At this point, it is unlikely that many were still anticipating a PlayStation 3 exclusive Agent, however, the game’s continued presence on Rockstar and Take-Two’s official websites suggested that there may be a future for the new franchise yet. But now, with this information from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, it may be time to finally let go of Agent for good.
With the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 only a month behind us, a title that our writers have called a “once in a generation type of game,” it is hard to be too upset about the end of production on a game that has felt dead for so many years. However, for those that were still holding out hope for Agent’s release, hopefully, this trademark abandonment simply indicates a new start for the stealth action franchise.
