I think it’s fair to say that the past few months haven’t been easy for No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games, or the game’s creator Sean Murray.
Their massive open universe sim promised much, and delivered little. So little in fact, that the team is under investigation from the UK Advertising Standards Authority.
In addition, the game’s Subreddit had to be shut down (albeit temporarily) for hosting such a toxic atmosphere. Oh, and No Man’s Sky is now the lowest rated game on Steam.
Obviously the team brought much of this on themselves, especially Murray, who spent years making promises about things that simply weren’t in the game.
With that said, you can’t help but feel for the guy – he clearly cared about No Man’s Sky, and to see it go down like a lead balloon can’t have been easy.
Remembering that Sean Murray is an actual person – not an internet hate figure – a number of fans recently reached out to him and Hello Games to see how things were going.
They received a small update on everything from audio chief for No Man’s Sky, Paul Weir. Apparently Sean is ‘fine’ and the team are hard at work on the next patch.
Weir was then quizzed as to why Hello Games have been so frustratingly silent on all of the criticism leveled at the game.
He replied:
I’m afraid I have nothing useful to say. It’s entirely up to Hello or Sean as to when they want to talk publicly.
I think it’s safe to assume that at some point Murray himself will come out to address everything that’s gone down since launch – but the amount of trust he’s lost with many gamers could be irreparable.
Personally, I reckon there’s a great game hiding in No Man’s Sky somewhere – with updates, fixes, and a little more time, it might not be the game we expected, but it could still be something special.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.