Matthew Byrd

Jan 16, 2019

Pioneer, the sci-fi game Ubisoft teased in Watch Dogs 2, seems to have been cancelled.

Ubisoft’s previously-teased sci-fi game is apparently no more.

This news comes from former Ubisoft creative director Alex Hutchinson who tweeted out the previously released teaser for the game along with a message that simply stated “RIP Pioneer.” It was believed at the time that Pioneer was the working name for the project. This tweet was echoed by fellow former Ubisoft employee, Jonathan Cooper.

Let’s do a little historical housekeeping before diving into this further. The Pioneer conversation began in a relatively unusual way when fans discovered what appeared to have been a well-hidden teaser for the game in Watch Dogs 2. While there were some who thought the teaser was just a clever little Easter Egg (it was even found in Ubisoft’s in-game offices), it was later confirmed by sources close to the situation that the teaser related to a sci-fi game that was either actively in development at Ubisoft or was at least in development at the studio at one time.

All of that makes these recent tweets that much more interesting. At the time of the initial Pioneer “reveal,” those who had knowledge of the game itself seemed to indicate that the project wasn’t being talked about all that much (even internally). It seems that Ubisoft liked to ensure that word of such projects was kept pretty close to heart. Even other studios within the company weren’t sure of the specifics.

So why is it that these two former Ubisoft employees sent out what appears to be confirmation of this project’s cancellation within a relatively similar timeframe? Our best guess is that the Pioneer project was floating in limbo for quite some time and that was likely not being actively developed by a significant portion of the company. It was probably recently decided to scrap the project entirely, and these two got word of it through the grapevine (likely because they were involved with its development at some point).

In any case, those looking for new sci-fi experiences from major studios still have Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds to look forward to as well as Bethesda’s mysterious Starfield project.