PIONER is Not Always Ready
"We don't know for sure what went wrong. But from the inside, we see many moments that could have led to this." This is how one GFA Games employee answers the question that now inevitably arises whenever PIONER is mentioned.
In essence, this phrase encapsulates the entire story. PIONER didn't have one fatal decision, one missed deadline, or one catastrophic call after which everything finally fell apart. The project reached its current state through a long chain of reworks, inflated expectations, and problems that went unresolved for years, only layering on top of each other. But before moving on to the studio's internal crisis, it's worth briefly restoring the context.
The history of PIONER began around 2017–2018, when the project was still called re:BORN. However, for a long time, development was effectively stalling. When, according to one of the editorial office's interlocutors, employees joined the team, they were faced with "scorched earth" where the previous team had managed to burn through the money of an unnamed private investor. After that, a new group of developers took the initiative, and PIONER itself was rebooted in 2021 under the wing of GFA Games, led by Aleksandr Nikitin.
"PIONER before the start of 2021 and after it are two absolutely different games, two different concepts and development teams. And the game that existed before never really existed."
Along with Nikitin, new money came into the project. The studio put together impressive trailers, brought the game into the public eye, showed it at E3, and began positioning PIONER as a major MMO shooter with survival elements. In the fall of 2021, it became known that Tencent had acquired a minority stake in GFA Games. The amount of the deal was not disclosed, but the mere fact of such an investor's appearance sharply raised expectations for the project. PIONER quickly moved from the category of curious announcements to the rank of games with serious ambitions.
The timeline targets sounded particularly ambitious back then. The game's release was promised either at the end of 2021 or in the first quarter of 2022. In retrospect, these plans look obviously unrealistic. It later became clear that behind the bright trailers was a project that was only just trying to find its own form. Moreover, it was in 2022 that the game underwent another change of concept, albeit without a complete reset of the work already done. After that, the studio went into the shadows for a long time.
Only by the beginning of 2024 did GFA Games start cautiously talking about preparing for release again. The studio's CEO, Aleksandr Nikitin, claimed in an address on the official website that the main game modules were already ready, although the project still needed work on the story campaign, online component, and general polish. This was followed by several stages of internal and closed testing, and only in December 2024 did the game finally get a Steam page.
In the spring of 2025, PIONER began to be actively shown to the press and content makers. The first demonstrations left a mixed impression. On the one hand, the project had a strong and clear image—an MMO shooter with obvious associations with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro, and Fallout 76. On the other hand, problems with the quest structure, combat system, technical state, and general game design were already striking.
After the demonstration of the "Manufactura" raid in the summer of 2025, the game began to look more confident, and the cautious skepticism surrounding it was replaced by equally cautious optimism. The final version remained a mystery, but the project at least began to give the impression of a game that is moving heavily and slowly, but still moving toward release.
By autumn, PIONER had turned into one of the most discussed Russian long-term projects, and the developers reported surpassing the 500,000 wishlist mark. For a project by a little-known studio, and one clearly oriented primarily toward the audience of the post-Soviet space, this figure looked more than impressive.
In November, the Early Access release date was finally announced—December 16, 2025. But at the same time, users from Russia and Belarus learned that they would not be able to buy PIONER on Steam because the developers had signed an exclusive agreement with the "Igry Rostelecom" service for these countries.
The loyal audience perceived this step as a betrayal. The studio had been collecting Steam wishlists for a long time, building interest in the project, and at the decisive moment, effectively cut off a significant part of this audience from their usual platform.
But the problem was not just the exclusivity itself. The platform was simply not ready for full technical testing before release, nor, as it soon turned out, for the release itself. While Steam users, albeit with glitches, were still trying to connect to the game, tests on "Igry Rostelecom" failed one after another. Belarusian players were unable to even register on the platform for a long time just to buy the game. This was fixed later, but the bad aftertaste remained.
The Early Access release did take place on December 16. However, it was accompanied by delays, crashes, black screens, and update issues. It very quickly became clear that one of the most anticipated Russian long-term projects was launching in an unacceptably raw state—even by Early Access standards. On Steam, PIONER's peak online at launch reached only 1,686 people. Then it went down and eventually stalled at around a thousand concurrent players.
The developers continued to fix the game, released patches, and are still doing so, but they have not yet managed to turn the situation around and attract a truly solid audience. Meanwhile, monetization gradually became more aggressive. In February 2026, a premium subscription appeared in the game with bonuses directly affecting gameplay. At the same time, as one of the editorial office's interlocutors claims, the subscription itself was planned from the start, but without gameplay advantages, until at some point it was suddenly decided to increase its "value" for players.
Why—is a question the answer to which now seems almost obvious and in some sense symptomatic. When the media started talking about salary delays at GFA Games, talk of a failed release and the studio's possible financial problems sounded even louder. We then reached out to the developers with a simple offer: if you have something to say, contact us.
The answer didn't take long. And now we know that the story of PIONER is not just a cynical scam, as some try to present it by comparing the game to the infamous The Day Before. It is a much more prolonged, tangled, and at times absurd crisis that has been maturing inside the studio for a long time. It is not limited to an unsuccessful release, problems with "Igry Rostelecom," or even financial difficulties.
How Chaos Became the System
Conversations with employees and studio heads quickly showed that the root of the crisis lay deeper—in the very development culture that had formed within the project and directly determined how the game was made. Even when PIONER already had trailers, public promises, and a clear marketing image, there was still no stable system within GFA Games capable of bringing decisions to a result without endless rollbacks, conflicts, and manual management.
Everything boiled down to a basic question that had no common answer within the studio for years: what should PIONER even be. At different times, Fallout, Genshin Impact, Destiny, and other projects were cited as benchmarks, but a single and equally clear vision of the development vector never emerged. Quests were reworked several times from single-player to cooperative and back. Some mechanics appeared, disappeared, and then returned in a modified form. According to rank-and-file employees, the game design department "never had a roadmap, never had normal sprints," and the game designers themselves often felt not like authors of systems, but like content assemblers who just needed to follow instructions from above and not ask unnecessary questions.
Broken communication played a significant role in this, giving rise to frankly absurd situations. In one case, a team would receive a task and start assembling content, and when the work reached the final stage, a new instruction would come from above, turning everything 180 degrees. In another, departments learned about new mechanics, updates, and announcements after the fact, sometimes simultaneously with the players: from interviews, social media, or even from bug reports of testers checking features that not everyone knew existed yet.
Normal documentation for such decisions either didn't exist at all or appeared too late. Even the release of the game through "Igry Rostelecom" was learned by the team relatively late—about a month or a month and a half before release. In this sense, the developers and players turned out to be surprisingly close to each other.
The consequence of this workflow was overwork. According to employees, crunches on the project were common practice, and compensation was paid in different ways. In at least one department, overtime was supposed to be paid and hours recorded. However, the procedure according to the Labor Code was not followed, and people never received payments for these hours. Moreover, the very logic of overwork within the studio was often explained very simply: if people are overworking, it means they just can't do everything right the first time, which means it's their problem.
All these grievances were mentioned in a collective letter prepared by employees in 2024 for the studio founder Aleksandr Nikitin. In it, they complained about overwork, the lack of a clear roadmap, constant last-minute edits, and broken development processes. But the letter was never sent. And this in itself says a lot about the level of trust within the company even before the current payment crisis. According to rank-and-file employees, Nikitin was perceived as someone who had not intervened in processes for too long and turned a blind eye to systemic problems. People simply didn't believe that such an appeal would change anything or at least not make their situation worse.
At the same time, in a conversation with one of the department heads, a different picture emerges. In it, Nikitin appears not as a passive observer, but as an arbiter who constantly decided which side was right in the next conflict between departments.
This is directly related to the very structure of the studio. First, testing within the project split in two. Classic QA appeared alongside a separate circuit of playtesters working in the orbit of game design. Formally, this was supposed to speed up the search for problems. In practice, the system only became more complicated. A bug already filed and analyzed could be sent for re-checking to another circuit simply because there was no trust between them.
Later, the studio itself split according to the same logic. With the arrival of Technical Director Maksim Volf, two management circuits effectively formed in the company. Game design, level design, art, and localization remained under Petrov. Programming and QA ended up under Volf, but the playtester circuit still remained with Petrov. On paper, such a scheme might look quite typical for a studio that has grown several times over in a short period. In reality, it didn't bring development into a single process, but only consolidated two camps within the company that regularly clashed. One interlocutor described this principle as "divide and rule."
For example, the technical department expected a fully finished document from game design, although for a complex mechanic, this is an almost unattainable requirement. Game designers, in turn, could not account for all technical limitations in advance. Instead of changing the process itself and building normal collaborative work, Nikitin more often acted as a judge who determined the winner in the next dispute. This did not reduce tension but only indirectly fueled conflicts between departments.
But if Nikitin was the figure of arbitration in this construction, Aleksandr Petrov determined the daily working environment and the final creative direction of the project. In old stories from former employees, in the 2024 letter, and in conversations with the editorial office, his figure appears again and again—linked with a hot-tempered communication style, profanity, public dressing-downs, painful reactions to criticism, and attempts to push through his own vision even when specialists pointed out technical, design, or production problems.
The editorial office was provided with audio recordings of several work calls. Individual fragments of them can be heard in the video on the IXBT Games channel. In one such fragment, a person identified by interlocutors as Petrov can be heard interrupting a colleague, switching to profanity, and not allowing them to finish their thought calmly. At that moment, the colleague is trying to explain why the constant addition of new content to the build prevents tracking technical problems and effectively nullifies the point of regression testing.
In such an atmosphere, the very possibility of a normal professional dispute gradually disappeared. One interlocutor describes a typical situation like this: "When you enter into a polemic with Aleksandr, you hear phrases like: 'This is my vision, this is my creation, how can you possibly doubt me?'"
For instance, during one discussion, an employee directly raised basic questions about the state of PIONER. In his opinion, the project lacked a clear gameplay loop, progression was "dead," and the player couldn't even answer the main question: what to do here at all. As interlocutors claim, there was no substantive response from Petrov to these questions at the time; instead, the employee was simply banned from participating in such discussions.
All of this directly hit the quality of the game itself. QA work in these conditions, according to one employee, was "literally devalued every day." There was never a moment when some part of the game had time to be fully tested and fixed before moving on to the next. New changes could be poured into already checked content after a short time, after which the cycle began anew.
And when testers brought not only bug reports but also observations that certain decisions made the game inconvenient or simply unpleasant for the player, these complaints were often ignored. In response, as interlocutors recall, it was said: "You are not here to evaluate the artistic part of the game. That's none of your business." As a result, some problems remained outside of priorities for years and were simply not resolved. A telling example is lipsync, which had been complained about for a long time and regularly, but which no one dealt with until one of the specialists took it upon themselves.
Other areas suffered in a similar way. After the departure of narrative designers, Petrov effectively became one of the main providers of texts and ideas. And the localization department was forced not only to translate materials but also to bring them into a working state because the texts arrived raw and unfit for publication. At first, Petrov allowed them to be refined, but over time such attempts began to cause irritation, and a new unspoken pipeline appeared, according to which all texts began to be additionally coordinated with game design, although the game design department itself simply didn't care. Thus, communication became more complicated once again, and the quality of materials did not increase. One employee described these texts very simply: "They are just sad like that."
According to employees, Petrov didn't just set the general direction but also interfered in the visual part at the level of specific decisions—down to the lighting and the final look of scenes. The problem was not the fact of such participation itself, but that such decisions were often made without regard for optimization and in conditions where the team already had tight deadlines.
Against this background, the example with raids is particularly indicative. One of the most successful parts of PIONER, which we ourselves once rated higher than the rest of the content, was assembled in a very short time exactly when Petrov was on vacation. This in itself does not explain all the project's problems. But as a production symptom, it says a lot: even the strong elements of the game here were born not thanks to the system, but too often in spite of it.
A logical consequence of such a system was how the game was released into Early Access. As one worker recalls, in a normal studio, six months before launch, there should already be a stable build that is then tested and polished for months. In the case of PIONER, much continued to be finished literally until the last day. This applied to game design, the technical part, and individual monetization elements that had to be assembled in emergency mode.
But the problem was not only how such a system affected the game. Over time, it formed an internal environment where loyalty was increasingly valued no less than competence. And the more actively a person argued, criticized decisions, or pointed out systemic failures, the faster they found themselves in the risk zone. Around Petrov, according to interlocutors, a circle of people eventually formed who either shared his approach or did not interfere with his work in the usual manner. In daily work, this translated into favoritism and selective tolerance for the mistakes of loyal employees.
The 2024 letter describes an even darker environment—with public humiliations, discussion of "guilty" employees in other channels, and completely absurd bans, up to a ban on putting approving emojis for colleagues from related departments.
In this system, a separate role, as our sources in the studio say, was played by HR. Instead of reducing tension and resolving conflicts, she often turned into an additional tool of pressure. Questions about processes, and later about salary delays, were not resolved but recorded as complaints and sent upstairs. One developer recalls how HR asked leads to "stop the flow of questions" from the team. According to sources, Petrov himself also regularly passed complaints about employees to HR, including for formal or far-fetched reasons. We deliberately do not cite specific cases to avoid revealing identities. But the scheme itself, judging by the stories, was repeated often enough for it to be perceived within the studio as part of a general pressure system.
Taken together, some employees gradually developed not only grievances about Aleksandr Petrov's management style but also direct questions about his professional competence. As follows from the 2024 letter, within the team he was reproached for almost never participating in playtests and being poorly oriented in the real state of the game, explaining this himself by a desire not to "blur the vision."
Some interlocutors directly wondered why he occupied the key creative position on the project. In response, his experience at Naughty Dog, working on Metro Exodus and other major projects, was usually pointed out. At the same time, only his previous project is known from open sources—the failed shooter OrangeCast. According to some employees, some of the same approaches, solutions, and even assets that later appeared in PIONER can be found in that game.
However, opinions within the studio differ here. Some indeed doubt his competence as a leader of such a scale. Others, including one of the leads, say otherwise: Petrov can be a difficult person and a source of conflict, but in specific professional areas, he is a very strong specialist.
Petrov himself, in a comment to the editorial office, admits some of the grievances related to poor communication between departments, suffering pipelines, and content verification. According to his version, the anger and discord were more a consequence of a heavy workload and responsibility than an ideological war. He also separately commented on the accusations of a despotic communication style. According to Petrov, earlier, when he had to combine a huge number of tasks and personally train departments, he indeed "stopped attempts to bring employees' vision into the project" if he believed it could cause conflicts or miss deadlines. At the same time, he insists that he does not show intolerance to others' opinions as such and is ready to listen to those who are capable not only of proposing but also of being responsible for the result.
One of the project leads generally confirms that such conflicts did indeed happen in the past but adds that in the last year and a half, Petrov has become noticeably more restrained and calmer, has grown as a leader, and has gone through a difficult adaptation to the studio's growth from eight people to about a hundred in just a few years. In short, there is positive dynamics, according to interlocutors. But it does not change the fact that a significant part of the grievances against him had accumulated long before the current crisis and were well known within the studio.
Over time, all this production mess simply became established as the norm and replaced the system. This state is well described by the words of one of the studio veterans, which can be heard in the video on the IXBT Games channel. In the recording, the employee talks about an environment in which "everyone doesn't give a ****" and "everyone survives as best they can," and an "avalanche of 'feces'" flows from top to bottom, seeping into all departments. And when non-payments were added to such an environment, for some employees it was no longer just a development crisis. It became a survival crisis in the literal sense.
Financial Crisis of Trust
Financial problems at GFA Games were not limited to the delays of recent months. According to employees, the payment system itself had long worked in such a way that money could be used not only as a form of reward but also as a tool of pressure. The income of many consisted of two parts—a fixed salary and a bonus. This is common practice for many companies. But inside the studio, bonuses could be used to formalize raises without changing the base salary, and they could also be used to punish inconvenient employees, who inevitably appeared in the system described above. In some cases, decisions to withhold bonuses, according to sources, were made retroactively and without clear warning.
As for the delays themselves, when App2Top wrote about salary delays at GFA Games in April 2026, for an outside observer, this story looked like a new crisis that began after the problematic release. But in conversations with the editorial office, it turned out that the first serious delays began in November 2025, that is, about a month and a half before the game's Early Access release.
Employees were told about problems with money transfers, currency control, international settlements, and difficulties related to Serbia, where the studio's head office is located. Versions changed, but the result remained the same: the money did not arrive on time.
When the delay dragged on, some employees exercised their right to suspend work under Article 142 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. The first such applications, according to interlocutors, were filed about a month and a half after the delays began. After that, there was indeed a reaction from management: some payments went through, and along with them came compensation for the delay. As employees claim, it was calculated at the minimum threshold. This was enough for people to temporarily return to work, but then a new pause followed.
Then the scheme repeated. Management again named dates for the next payment, employees waited, but the money did not arrive. After that, some workers filed new applications under the same article. And the very next day, as follows from their stories, everyone who exercised this right lost access to corporate email, bug tracker, builds, Git, and other internal tools. Formally, no direct wording about "punishment" was used. But the employees themselves perceived this as a very transparent hint.
People who continued to be listed in the company but were deprived of access to all work tools found themselves in a strange limbo. They were not fired, did not receive money, could not work normally, and at the same time did not understand how this situation would end for them formally and legally.
At the same time, HR, as the developers said, did not reduce tension but rather reinforced the feeling of complete vulnerability. In one of the recordings in the editorial office's possession, in the midst of discussing non-payments, people are effectively offered not a solution to the problem, but the opportunity to file a resignation letter. When employees directly say in response that they don't want to change jobs but want to get what they've earned, they are answered with a phrase along the lines of: "You understand what country we live in."
But even resignation did not mean that a person would quickly and normally close all issues with the studio. Different scenarios followed. Some received their final settlement only after several weeks. Some did not receive the full amount. Some had interest for delays hanging. There was no common logic here, judging by the stories.
At the same time, the management's version of the reasons for the delays, judging by the data available to the editorial office, does not look far-fetched. On October 24, 2025, the 19th package of EU sanctions was adopted, which further complicated international settlements and the transfer of funds to a Russian legal entity. According to Aleksandr Nikitin, the studio was originally built as a maximally "white" structure—with audited reporting and a transparent circuit for investors. This left its mark on the current situation.
We cannot disclose all the details of this conversation, but we can say the main thing: the editorial office is convinced that the studio does indeed have money on a short-term horizon. In other words, the problem, at least in its current form, boils down not to a complete lack of funds as such, but to the fact that the company cannot quickly and safely bring them into Russia in ways that do not create new legal and financial risks for it or for any of the parties.
Because of this, the blow to employees was distributed unevenly. According to interlocutors, a relatively small part of the team works in Serbia—about 10-12 people. There, if delays occurred, they were isolated and brief. The main blow fell on people registered through the Russian legal entity. It is they who have been without money for months, without deadlines, and without a clear answer to the question of when the situation will finally be resolved.
One interlocutor directly says that some employees found themselves in a "truly sad position." According to leads, they had to literally lend money to subordinates from their own pockets so they could hold on a little longer. One department head in a conversation with the editorial office says that he personally lent his department's employees almost 300,000 rubles, and, according to him, other leads also helped people with their own money.
The situation was aggravated by the story with IT accreditation. In conversations with the editorial office, employees said that the studio's Russian legal entity had either already lost this status or was about to lose it and that no one was seriously dealing with restoration. We checked this information separately. OOO GFAGEIMS, through which employees in Russia were registered, is indeed no longer listed in the register of accredited IT companies.
For some people, this was particularly important. Employees took out IT mortgages based on the fact that they worked in an accredited company, and after the loss of this status, they found themselves in a situation where, along with salary delays, there was also a risk of losing preferential loan terms.
Thus, the financial crisis within the studio turned into a daily struggle for basic stability for part of the team—with debts, unpaid bills, disrupted plans, and constant uncertainty that dragged on for months. They went public to somehow move the situation from a dead point, and thereby showed how broken communication gradually grows into a crisis of trust of rank-and-file employees in management—and becomes one of the reasons why PIONER was released in such a state in principle. And ultimately, a logical question arises: why did people stay in these conditions for so long and why were they silent?
Fear, Silence, and a Small Industry
In conversations with the editorial office, employees directly admit that they felt unprotected and feared consequences in general, and not just at the moment when salary delays began. The field is small, and a person who publicly voices a too unpleasant story risks quickly becoming an "undesirable" employee not only in the eyes of management but also in the eyes of the entire industry. According to interlocutors, rhetoric about traitors sounded inside the company for years, dissatisfied people were hinted at possible "blacklists," and at the same time they were made to understand that management has both strong lawyers and external connections that could also be used in case of conflict.
One of the developers told the editorial office that this is a "very typical story for beginning specialists, for people who are just entering the industry, changing professions, or simply dreaming of working in gamedev." It seems to him that you need to "just endure, just try hard, just prove that you deserve to be here." Therefore, the editorial office's interlocutors separately asked not to mix those who made the game and those who managed it.
"Please separate the people who worked and the people who managed. Those who made the game did not make the decisions for which they were later condemned in videos or are condemned in the news. They did not make decisions to do everything poorly. On the contrary, they really wanted to make the right decisions but faced micromanagement, the 'security guard syndrome' in management positions, and that very 'avalanche of ****' that has already been mentioned. Sorry for the emotionality, but I really want to ask for only one thing: please separate the people who put their strength and their time into this game and the people who simply spat on that strength."
Verdict
The story of PIONER ultimately turns out to be more complex than just another tale of raw Early Access, controversial monetization, or prolonged development. Behind a project with a strong image and big ambitions, a systemic crisis has been accumulating for years, in which the wrong gradually became the norm.
The editorial office's conversations with current and former employees, department heads, and the studio's CEO show that there is an understanding within the company of the scale of the accumulated problems. Rank-and-file specialists spoke of chaos, pressure, fear, and a sense of complete vulnerability. Managers spoke of conflicting management circuits, sagging pipelines, and the impossibility of normally synchronizing development.
The question now is whether real changes will follow. Before the studio can regain players' trust in its game, it seems it will have to regain its own employees' trust in the very system within which this game is created. And starting here should not be with new promises and roadmaps, but with closing debts to the people who all this time continued, and some still continue, to pull the project on themselves.
DISCLAIMER
The IXBT Games editorial office spoke with several current and former GFA Games employees, as well as with the studio's management. Some interlocutors agreed to the conversation only on condition of anonymity, fearing consequences for their careers.
The editorial office has audio recordings, correspondence, and other materials confirming the key episodes of this material.