PlayStation Studios has announced the formation of teamLFG, a brand new studio comprising ex-Bungie staffers and “developers from across the industry”, and the studio is already hard at work on its first game.
As revealed in a PlayStation Blog post, teamLFG “originated at Bungie”, but it’s now a separate entity that’s working on what Sony Interactive head Hermen Hulst describes as “an ambitious incubation project that [he’s] very excited about”.
Just in case you’re wondering, yes, the “LFG” in teamLFG’s name stands for “Looking for Group”, MMORPG-style. The studio says it’s “driven by a mission to create games where players can find friendship, community, and belonging”, hence the name.
In the PlayStation Blog announcement, teamLFG says its debut project is “a team-based action game that draws inspiration from fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games”. It’ll all take place in a “lighthearted, comedic world”.
If that wording sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because the exact same project was “announced” by Bungie in August 2023, and it was still classed as an “incubation” project then, too. Looks like the game may still be some way away from being officially revealed.
According to teamLFG, its goal is not only to react to player feedback “in our lead-up to launch” (although it feels a little premature for the studio to say that when the game hasn’t even been revealed yet), but also “throughout live service”, so it sounds like this’ll be yet another live-service experiment for Sony.
It’d be remiss of me not to once again bring up Concord here; the first-person shooter was a hugely costly endeavor for Sony, but it closed its doors within just weeks of its launch, resulting in the closure of its developer. I’m not sure yet another live-service game is the way to go, but hey, I’m not Sony.
The new studio’s game will also find itself entering a landscape occupied by Bungie’s next major live-service project, extraction shooter reboot Marathon, which is due to launch in September.
Whether or not Marathon succeeds could well inform whether teamLFG’s game manages to see the light of day, or whether it gets canned in a similar manner to the two Respawn incubation projects which were shut down recently. Stay tuned for more.
