The confusion stems from footage that was uploaded after a number of fans managed to procure early copies of the open universe survival game.
Naturally, publisher Sony wasn’t thrilled with this turn of events, and soon set about issuing copyright strikes to remove videos showing unauthorised content.
The problem was that Sony were a touch overzealous in their takedowns – they actually issued several strikes against videos and YouTubers that had only discussed the game, despite not having used any of the leaked footage or information.
No Man’s Sky creator Sean Murray soon had to jump on Twitter and apologise to the YouTubers who found their videos taken down, and reassure them that it would be sorted.
Seriously, say what you want about No Man’s Sky, but the team at Hello Games seem like genuinely good folk.
The Steven Thomas that Murray specifically mentioned in the above tweet goes by the YouTube name of No Man’s Sky Gamer, and was actually planning a 24-hour livestream for the Make-A-Wish foundation.
Unfortunately, this looked like something he was no longer able to do thanks to the copyright strike on his account.
Thankfully, the issue was sorted in time for Thomas to start his charity livestream, while Sony continues to acknowledge and fix any erroneous copyright strikes it may have issued.
Clearly, those leaked copies of No Man’s Sky have caused nothing but trouble for everyone. Hopefully when the game launches proper, we can all get back to enjoying it at the same pace.
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.