No Man’s Sky can be played online (technically), but you’ll be glad to learn that the PS4 version won’t require a PlayStation Plus subscription to do so.
Hello Game’s open universe survival adventure is set in a shared universe of 18 quintillion planets, so there’s a chance you could run into other players – but it’s highly unlikely that you ever will.
A Sony spokesperson told Game Informer:
PS Plus won’t be a requirement to play online, however you will need to connected to the internet for your discoveries to register with the universal atlas.
The universal atlas is there to let players upload and share discoveries, and to see what others have discovered (and then laugh at the rude name they gave their discovery).
The fact that the PS Plus requirement has been waived seems a pretty clear indication that both Sony and Hello Games consider No Man’s Sky to be a single player experience first and foremost.
In fairness, the developer has always downplayed the multiplayer side of things, often making it clear that it’s rare we’ll even end up on a planet that somebody has visited before.
It sure sounds lonely out there in No Man’s Sky’s universe – but I guess that’s kind of the point.
In other news, you can check out the third video in Hello Game’s ‘Guide to the Galaxy’ series below. This one takes a look at the trading system in-game.
No Man’s Sky will be out August 9 in North America, and August 10 in Europe and Australia.
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.