devtrackers.gg
They did an amazing job at keeping it secret for the 1.0 release too. We basically heard absolutely nothing about it for something like 4 years and then BAM it’s in the game. The vast majority of early access players weren’t even around in .12 at that point so many (myself included) had never even heard about it until it was released.
And what a helluva thing it is.
History lesson alert:
We didn't really keep it "secret". The reality was, that we simply didn't know how to make use of the vehicle. Sure it was very cool, but this example you see was literally just a vehicle. Naturally it would be unlocked quite late in the game, at which point you already have power armor mk2 with which you can move super fast. The problem was, that the spider vehicle couldn't really match that speed, as the legs would just start looking too silly. And there you go, suddenly you'd unlock something that'd be slower, which almost inherently means it'd be worse.
As a result, we didn't keep it secret, we simply weren't trying to engage in discussions about it to try to avoid people being excited about it because we didn't see the path forward with it.
Only very late into 0.18, about 2-3 months before the release of 1.0, we've been thinking if this is it for the release, or if there is any way to add something. The only real idea was the spidertron but we still didn't know how to use it. Soon after I came with the idea that it could be a remotely controlled vehicle (as the legs sort of allow for using it as a flying vehicle as it does no pathfinding so we could just send it straight almost anywhere), with equipment grid (so it could do construction tasks or be a warrior), and not long before that time there was a change to how rocket projectiles work, which allowed using rocket launchers which just shoot out of the vehicle in the correct direction and correct themselves along the way. Plus there was the nuke, which was a must have for the spider of course.
And from that, we agreed to try it to do it. Together with the intense combined work of Twinsen implementing the logic of the spider vehicle, posila implementing the drawing, and me taking care of creating the graphics, we were able to have the spidertron finished about 1 month before the release, so the last month could be spent making trailers, which of course included the spiders at the end.