The news comes from former Ubisoft employee Alex Hutchinson, a developer who has worked on numerous hit games like Far Cry 4, The Sims 2, and Assassin’s Creed 3. On Twitter, Hutchinson posted a short teaser trailer for a game known as Pioneer, a game that never received a formal announcement. Hitchinson captioned the short trailer with the words: “RIP Pioneer” as well as adding a crying emoji signaling that the project has been scrapped entirely. Following up on his original post, Hutchinson was directly asked if the project was “super dead,” to which he replied with three more of the crying face emojis.
Even though Pioneer was a game that Ubisoft never officially revealed to the public, players actually got a sneak peek a the game back in 2016 without initially realizing it. One mission inside of Watch Dogs 2 had players breaking into a fictionalized version of Ubisoft’s San Francisco office to steal a trailer in order to sell it to gaming websites. During the mission, players download the trailer and then livestream it to an in-game audience.
That teaser trailer turned out to be a quick look at the sci-fi game known as Pioneer. At that time, players had no idea they were watching a teaser for an actual, in development, game at Ubisoft.
As fun as that Easter Egg was, the game was reportedly in real trouble by that point. Originally scheduled for a 2017 reveal, Ubisoft swapped out the game’s leadership, reworked core concepts, and ultimately forced to delay it. Unfortunately, the trailer is now the only piece of information fans ever got regarding the title and even then, it wasn’t much to go on. It’s unlikely that Ubisoft will spend any more time discussing the project, leaving fans to wonder what could have been.
Source: Alex Hutchinson Twitter; Kotaku
