Pure Farming 17 delayed to 2018

You probably won't find too many farming games at this year's (imminent) E3, but they remain big sellers with folks who enjoy growing digital crops and driving digital tractors, and if you count yourself in that fine group, you might be wondering what's happened to Ice Flames and Techland's Pure Farming 17, which was announced back in 2016 for release this year.

Well, the bad news is that Pure Farming 17 no longer exists. You won't find it on the official site, and you'll never be able to purchase it—because it's been renamed and delayed to next year. Say hello to Pure Farming 2018, everybody, and then get a load of this new trailer:

Publisher Techland has clearly been studying the trailers for Farming Simulator, as 90% of the preceding video involved lingering shots of shiny, high-end farming equipment. There's no firm release date, other than "2018", but here's the reasoning behind the delay:

"We know that many of you were expecting to get your hands on the game in 2017 and we are sorry for any disappointment," Techland says. "Pure Farming is our first farming sim and a very ambitious project, bringing a deep level of simulation across four diverse locations, a diverse stable of state-of-the-art, licensed machinery, unique activities for each region and much more. Rest assured the only reason we’ve delayed the game is to make it as good as it needs to be—and we’ll have lots more to show you in the weeks and months ahead."

“We have spent the last few months really stepping up our game," producer Krzysztof Czulec elaborates. "We listened to our fans, to farm sim players, and the farming community, and they gave us sage advice. We took notes, learned a lot, and managed to get even more great brands involved. We know the exact direction we are taking, and plan on bringing the best ever farming experience simultaneously to PC and consoles."

Thanks, RPS.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.