Good news: the survival game Prologue: Go Wayback has become completely free to play. The bad news – it’s not finished and never will be.
The video game industry is a volatile place. One day you create a global hit like PUBG, and a decade later you have a new studio on the verge of collapse that failed to complete a single game.
Such is the case of Brendan Greene, known as PlayerUnknown, and his studio PlayerUnknown Productions. After spending the last year developing the technology for a rather ambitious game, its initial version did not warm to the players.
Survival game Prologue: Go Wayback it was launched on Steam in late 2025, but attracted barely 180 concurrent players. Therefore, half a year later, it was decided that the development of the game would be stopped.
“Our goal was to develop technology that can break the limits of scale, which currently limit how large virtual worlds can be. To achieve this, we assembled a research team to develop our Melba technology and a team to develop our first practical application of terrain generation technology: Prologue: Go Wayback! Unfortunately, I have reached the limit of how far I can continue to fund this journey in its current form. Because of this, I have made the difficult decision to restructure the studio. We will continue to develop our Melba technology with a smaller team, while stopping further development of Go Wayback.”
The positive news is that PlayerUnknown Productions will remain alive, at least until further notice, and their game Prologue: Go Wayback has just became completely free. Until now, it cost 20 euros, and those who bought it will be able to get a refund regardless of how long they played it, if they request a refund by August 17 of this year.
Is it worth playing a game that will never be finished? There are probably different opinions about it, but everyone can decide for themselves by trying the game. I tried Prologue: Go Wayback, back there in 2025, for about five minutes – and turned off the game when I noticed that in this quasi-realistic survival game, trees sprout from stone.