Announced in May 2025, teamLFG are the newest addition to PS Studios. LFG stands for 'looking for group' as according to their announcement, they 'create games where players can find friendship, community, and belonging'. While these titbits foreshadow their debut game, LFG's unique history must be discussed first because they aren't a new studio - they've been around for years as an incubation team within Bungie.
As part of Bungie, LFG worked on Destiny and Halo. But their experience also extends to non-shooter live-service IP like League of Legends and Roblox. This history can be seen all over their game, Project Gummy Bears - a team-based action game inspired by fighters, MOBAs, platformers, life sims, etc. It's still set in a science-fantasy world, but has a light-hearted, comedic tone to distinguish itself from Destiny.
Even when Gummy Bears was an early incubation game, internal playtests were not only more positive than Bungie's Marathon, but word of mouth was so good that it spread throughout PS Studios. So in 2024, when Bungie's significant financial issues came to light and all options were on the table for Sony to extract value, the 40-person team was an obvious one to bring directly into PS Studios as they'd now have full control over GB. LFG's games now have no onus to come to Xbox or Nintendo, whereas Bungie is multiplatform.
Little else has been officially said about Gummy Bears, but gameplay details have leaked. GB is a PvP team-based competitive game that will include multiple modes and class types. It's fundamentally a MOBA but takes influence from Smash Bros to differentiate from others in the genre. That means characters falling off maps and percentage-based damage instead of HP. In order to appeal to a younger audience than Bungie has, friends can hang out to 'express their identity' in a 'lo-fi and cozy' vibe between matches.
Out of Sony's upcoming live-service games, I'm more optimistic about Gummy Bears than most. Even internally within Bungie, its reception was better than Marathon. It's also very telling that with all of Bungie's current turmoil, LFG showed enough promise for Sony to extract them from a bad situation and directly nurture GB's potential.
Gummy Bears also doesn't have some of the pitfalls other Sony live-service games do. Unlike the saturated shooter-focused genre Fairgames/Marathon are in, GB easily stands out as it's the only Smash Bros type game on PS5. Its lighter tone could also be a major selling point - similar to the virality Helldivers 2's managed democracy achieved. Finally, GB launches after the aforementioned games, thus giving Sony plenty of data to see what went right/wrong.
Nonetheless, despite the optimism, Gummy Bears is still years away and due to the volatility of live-service, the truth is that its critical and/or commercial success can go either way. Hopefully, LFG stay true to their word of many early access playtests. This will be the best barometer of what an increasingly pessimistic hardcore PS5 base thinks of yet another live-service game.
Genre: Team-Based Action
Release Date: Unreleased
Days Since Their Last Game: N/A
Metacritic Score: N/A