Bungie’s “Gummy Bears” Project Shifts to Fresh PlayStation Development Team

According to Game Post, one of Bungie’s undisclosed initiatives, codenamed ‘Gummy Bears,’ has shifted development hands. The publication reports that the forthcoming title is currently with an internal, unnamed PlayStation team that consists of “around 40” former Bungie employees.

Last year, Bungie terminated 220 employees following the release of Destiny 2: The Final Shape. Additionally, it reassigned 115 employees to PlayStation Studios to develop one of its projects mentioned at the time to be in incubation. Prior to The Final Shape’s debut, Gummy Bears was reported to be “in a holding pattern” as Bungie concentrated its efforts on that Destiny 2 expansion, as well as its extraction shooter Marathon.

Game Post has described Gummy Bears as a team-oriented MOBA (the genre popularized by Riot Games’ League of Legends and Valve’s DOTA 2), representing Bungie’s initial venture into this specific genre. It is reportedly crafted with a younger audience in mind, rather than older demographics attracted to previous franchises like Destiny and Halo.

Last September, Game Post highlighted a recent patent application from Bungie concerning “controlling game behavior of defensive objective characters in a virtual setting.” The patent noted that the mechanic has been used in genres such as MOBA and tower defense titles, and that the incorporation of “behavior trees” for defensive AI entities could potentially “be utilized to manage the actions of the defensive objective character.”

Previously, a patent application from Bungie for touchscreen controls on mobile and handheld devices was discovered prior to the reveal for Destiny: Rising, a mobile spinoff of the studio’s sci-fi shooter series.

You can read Game Post’s complete analysis on what ‘Gummy Bears’ is here. Game Developer has reached out to PlayStation for a statement and will provide updates once a response is received.

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