In a recent retrospective on the development of Bully, Dan Houser stated that the pressure of creating a new title was compounded by controversies surrounding the game's name prior to its release, which distracted the team. He believes that, as a result, the game did not receive the attention it deserved.
Houser believes that developing a novel game that no one had made before inherently placed pressure on the team. The fact that Bully was released just over a year after GTA: San Andreas also left a deep impression on him regarding that development period.
He specifically mentioned that even before the game's release, some people misunderstood it based solely on its title without having seen the actual product. According to Houser's recollection, the team had to devote significant effort to convincing stores to stock the game and trying to prevent protests before its launch.