We reported a few weeks ago that, based on some tweets by former and current Ubisoft employees, it seemed like Pioneer, their science fiction project, was dead. Pioneer was meant to be a science fiction game with an emphasis on non violent exploration, and it had first been teased in Watch Dogs 2 back in 2016. Apparently its demise had come after a rocky development.
However, now, based on a report by Kotaku, it seems that Pioneer may still be kicking around—albeit in a dramatically changed form. Kotaku reports that Pioneer has morphed into a co-op alien shooter, and that it may even tie into the Rainbow Six series somehow. Which seems extremely unlikely on a conceptual level, but at the same time, Ubisoft has reportedly been trying to have a less grounded Rainbow Six game for ages now. This would certainly be one way to achieve that.
Now, a few things—this is still a rumor, and even if it is true, there is no guarantee the game in question actually gets released. A whole lot of games get pretty far in development but then go nowhere (a recent example would be Metroid Prime 4, which is basically being re-developed from scratch after initial development for it seems to not have gone anywhere). So don’t necessarily hold your breath for Pioneer. Though if it is real, I will hope that it does get revealed in some form soon.