Recently, a tweet appeared on Hello Games’ feed reading “ No Man’s Sky was a mistake”. The tweet was taken down almost immediately, but remained on the developer’s website for quite some time. The Twitter account was then set to private, which usually hints towards a hack. But the story doesn’t stop there. Various journalists, including Forbes, reached out to Hello Games and were told that a “disgruntled employee” was responsible for the tweet and that the developer was “currently trying to sort out the issue.” This makes sense, since Hello Games has about 16 employees, so who probably isn’t so much the question for them but how to handle it.
Next, Polygon reported that in a personal email (both signed and unsigned from various sources) Sean Murray admitted that “the tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down. We have not been coping well.” All the more horrifying, if not totally surprising. It’s been a strong suspicion of mine that Murray took all the negative backlash from No Man’s Sky release personally and was forced to take a long retreat from the world. I don’t blame him, but I don’t think making the issue public is the best way to heal. That said, it’s still entirely possible that Murray’s email was hacked and there is no “disgruntled employee.”
Did you think it was over? Nope! After that, Murray is reported to have tweeted that Hello Games’ servers were hacked. Does this mean the email was due to the hack too? No one can say for sure. Murray (apparently?) then tweeted that the hack was due to an issue with LinkedIn. I’m not too sold on this one, as the story continues. Frustrated journalists report yet another tweet by Murray saying “@hellogames are you still hacked and stuff?” Hello Games soon responded to this tweet attesting that all the emails to the journalists were part of the supposed hack, “100% not hacked anymore… obviously those mails and that tweet were fake. Back to work.”
At this point, the only way to know for sure what happened is a video comment from Hello Games or Sean Murray themselves. In addition, this is not the way to handle whatever happened. If Murray really did tweet that No Man’s Sky was a mistake, then Hello Games should have taken steps to address it publicly – not brush it under the rug of a confusing hack. And if this entire affair was a hack – then Hello Games definitely should have come out and said so a lot more clearly than all of the above nonsense.
I think what bothers me the most about this whole situation is the original statement itself. “ No Man’s Sky was a mistake.” I simply cannot agree; as someone said once, there’s no such thing as a bad game so much as there is a disappointing game. Opinions of No Man’s Sky have been deeply colored by hype and expectations, what was promised was not followed through upon. But that doesn’t make No Man’s Sky a mistake, just a very disappointing game. On its own, I would say that for an indie game it does well. It is an enormous exploration game that takes into account the vastness of space. This “‘vastness” is flawed, but the intent is there. There is even a small mystery with the monoliths, even if it takes 2001: A Space Odyssey a little too literally. But the heart of game is experiencing the exploration of space in a way that isn’t the glossy decks Star Trek and more the rusted panels of Firefly . Though this kind of exploration is not new to the gaming world ( EVE Online , for example), No Man’s Sky still adds its own flavor. The procedural generation is still unique (even if it doesn’t execute itself well), and the art style is clever.
Whoever tweeted that – hacker, Murray, or someone at Hello Games, has every right to be upset. But don’t call No Man’s Sky a mistake. It added to the genre of space exploration games and it did well enough. At the least, Hello Games can learn from critics of the game and what happened around it. No Man’s Sky is not a mistake.