Lighthouse Games Gears Up to Take On Forza Horizon: Drive the World Surfaces in Trademark Filings

The open-world arcade racing genre, which has had a clear ruler for years, is starting to fill up with challengers that came out of the very same house. According to Vandal, Lighthouse Games, the studio founded by Gavin Raeburn, co-founder and former director of PlayGround Games, may be very close to unveiling its first project. The clues come from the European trademark register, where the studio has filed Ignition: Drive the World and Wonderland: Drive the World in recent days.

This matters because Raeburn is no ordinary name: he spent 12 years at the helm of PlayGround before leaving in 2022, and he has never hidden that his goal is to take on the biggest fish in the pond, Forza Horizon. Add to that Clutch, the game from Maverick Games, led by the director of Forza Horizon 5 alongside other veterans of the British studio. Two teams with Horizon DNA, one shared goal, and a king who, for the first time in a long while, has reason to check the rearview mirror.

What you need to know

• Gavin Raeburn, co-founder of PlayGround Games, left the studio in 2022 after 12 years and founded Lighthouse Games.
• Lighthouse Games has registered the trademarks Ignition: Drive the World and Wonderland: Drive the World in Europe.
• The Drive the World trademark had already surfaced in 2024, though it went almost entirely unnoticed.
• Insider Gaming speculates that Drive the World would be the game's title, while Ignition and Wonderland could be game modes.
• The project will compete not only with Forza Horizon but also with Maverick Games' Clutch.

The PlayGround diaspora and the battle for the asphalt

What makes this move interesting is that the challenge to Forza Horizon isn't coming from a rival publisher trying to copy the formula from the outside, but from the very people who built it. On one side, Maverick Games is working on Clutch, an open-world arcade racer led by the director of Forza Horizon 5. On the other, Raeburn and his Lighthouse Games, who, according to interviews cited by the source, openly see Horizon as the game to beat.

The fact that the Drive the World trademark has been registered since 2024, and that two variants with different subtitles have now appeared, suggests the project is maturing toward a reveal. A word of caution, though: a trademark filing is not an announcement, and the idea that Ignition and Wonderland are game modes is, for now, speculation from Insider Gaming, not something the studio has confirmed.

Three projects, one school

Our take

Here at Underworld Lordz, we see it clearly: competition is good for any genre, and arcade racing has been comfortable for too long. When a single game sets the pace, new ideas arrive in trickles. Having two studios with real experience on the series chase the same audience should force everyone to raise the bar, starting with Horizon itself.

That said, from a competitive player's point of view, there's a key piece missing: nobody has said yet how much weight multiplayer will carry, whether there will be serious ranked modes, or tools for organizing events. Open-world games tend to prioritize the festival and free roaming over structured competition, and that limits their lifespan in communities like ours. If Lighthouse truly wants to dethrone Horizon, pretty landscapes and shiny cars won't be enough; it needs a reason for people to come back every night to fight over tenths of a second.

For content creators, the outlook is more promising: three games in the same style mean comparisons, debates, and plenty of conversation. The risk is that they end up so similar that players find no reason to switch. Sharing a school is an advantage, but it can also become a cage if nobody dares to break the formula.

What do you think?

With Clutch and Lighthouse Games' project on the way, Forza Horizon finally has rivals with pedigree. Do you think either of them can take its crown, or will you stay loyal to the series you know? Drop by the team chat or our Discord and tell us: what would a new arcade racer need to make you switch garages?