Fans of MMO shooters are getting a new one with Pioner now available on Steam. However, the game, reminiscent of The Division with zombies, is being received quite poorly by players.
What kind of game is this? Pioner is a first-person MMO shooter where you fight for survival on a post-apocalyptic island. The mix of RPG, MMO shooter, and survival is somewhat reminiscent of The Division, but with zombies.
The game from the Russian indie developer GFA Games launched in Early Access on December 16, 2025, on Steam – and this, although it was supposed to be released in 2021 or 2022.
Here you can see the launch trailer for Pioner:
Server issues and bugs hinder gaming enjoyment
How is the game performing at release? The reviews from the first players are likely to be rather disappointing for the developers – especially after such a long development period. Only 47% of the total 340 reviews on Steam (as of December 17, 1:22 PM) are positive.
The gameplay is fun, the graphics are decent, and the story is interesting, but when your servers can’t support 1k players and you are advertising this as an mmo… thats not good.
The majority of players cannot recommend Pioner, at least not yet. There are several reasons for this: Skeeb0 points to server issues right at release, and this with not even 1,000 concurrent players at peak on Steam (according to steamdb.info). However, the game is fun and looks good, he writes in his Steam review.
The gameplay is fun, the graphics are decent, and the story is interesting, but if your servers can’t even handle 1,000 players and you advertise it as an MMO… then that’s not good.
Skeeb0 in his Steam review of Pioner
ZombieZZ is outraged by the technical state of the game. Within 35 minutes, the game crashed four times, with any progress lost each time. Despite several delays, the game appears ” in such a sorry ass state,” he complains in his Steam review.
“At the moment, I cannot recommend this game,” writes Wintergewitter in his Steam review. The concept and storyline of the game seem innovative and interesting, but within less than an hour of gameplay, he already encountered a serious bug.
Some players remain positive
What do the positive reviews say? There are already some players having fun with the game and asking not to be fooled by the many negative reviews.
As stated in a Steam review: “I get that many games have a rough start, but in my opinion this one has a lot of potential.” This player is already having fun and does not regret the purchase, he says. According to other reviews, the developers have also managed to address the server issues.
Pioner started with some difficulties in Early Access. While the reviews show a lot of negative sentiment, there are also players who consider these reactions exaggerated. The game is still in Early Access, so one cannot expect everything to go smoothly right away.
Whether Pioner can recover from these reviews and grow remains to be seen. However, the autumn of 2025 was packed with strong releases for fans of multiplayer shooters. Which of these is the best for us, you can find out in our ranking: The biggest multiplayer shooters from autumn 2025 in ranking – Which game snags the top spot?
