Sucker Punch breaks the bad news to Sly Cooper and Infamous fans

When someone starts a rumor that one of my favorite games from childhood is about to make a triumphant return, I try to not think much of it, lest my hopes be dashed by a far less interesting reality. My fellow Sly Cooper and Infamous fans were served a cold glass of reality today when Sucker Punch officially denied a rumor kicked up by 'insiders' over the last few months—sorry folks, nobody is working on a new Sly Cooper or Infamous game.

“With our focus on our current project, we have no plans to revisit inFAMOUS or Sly Cooper right now, and no other studio is currently working on projects related to those franchises either,” reads the blog post.

“These characters are very special and near and dear to our hearts, so while we’d never say never to re-opening those doors down the road, for now there are no inFAMOUS or Sly Cooper games in development.”

Sucker Punch is letting us down easy, but we really knew all along, right? The evidence around this rumor wasn't especially credible: an anonymous poster on 4chan said Sly 5 is real, and a supposedly reliable leaker backed up the claim. Platformers starring animals don't really set the world on fire these days, a lesson Sony learned nine years ago when it gave Sly Cooper 4 a try with a new developer. A new Infamous is less of a stretch, but considering Sucker Punch is still enjoying the major success of Ghost of Tsushima, backtracking for a fourth Infamous game doesn't make much sense either.

But a fun part of liking things is that, even when there's a snowball's chance in hell of something cool happening, it's still nice to know it maybe could. It's a shame that these false rumors stirred up enough expectations and excitement that Sucker Punch had to come out and confirm two series I love are well and truly dead. At least for now.