Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville trademarked by EA

(Image credit: EA)

EA recently confirmed that while Plants vs. Zombies 3 will be a mobile-exclusive, there is also a new PvZ shooter in the works for PC. Codenamed Picnic, it's currently in alpha, but recent leaks have suggested that rather than being Garden Warfare 3 it'll be called Battle for Neighborville. A recent trademark listing for that name in Europe seems to confirm it.

Neighborville is the name of the suburban setting of the Plants vs. Zombies comics, but a leaked description posted to Reddit suggests it won't be a story-focused game. According to the leak, this new game will have 20 character classes, a social region and three free-roam regions, and nine PvP modes including a 4v4 battle arena.

Perhaps Garden Warfare is being transitioned into something more likely to last as a long-term live-service game, but we'll have to wait and see.

Thanks, Gematsu.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.