Those with excellent memories may recall that, way back in 2016, Ubisoft teased a brand-new space exploration game within Watch Dogs 2, codenamed Pioneer. Well there’s some bad news if you’ve been patiently awaiting its arrival: the game is now reportedly dead.
Pioneer first came to the attention of the internet in 2016 via a nifty little easter egg within Watch Dogs 2. During one mission, players were encouraged to hack into the servers of a fictional Ubisoft San Francisco in order to steal a confidential E3 teaser and sell it to a gaming site. Once downloaded, the teaser transpired to be footage from a mysterious, unnamed space exploration game, with a colourful palette not dissimilar to Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky.
Not long after, Ubisoft sources confirmed to Kotaku that the footage was from a very real, but as-yet-unannounced game with the codename Pioneer. At the time, Pioneer was said to have originally been scheduled for an official reveal the following year in 2017, but development troubles meant a delay was inevitable until it was “retooled”.
