Since its release on August 9, No Man’s Sky has taken a ton of flack from the gaming community. The developers at Hello Games promised players a substantially different game than the one they got, and even Sony has started to distance itself from this overhyped title.
Sean Murray, the man in charge of Hello Games, has received the most criticism for over-promising on No Man’s Sky. He took to Twitter on August 18 in an attempt to appease players, but has not been heard from since the version 1.0.7 patch notes that he wrote.
We’re totally focused on customer support right now. Then we’ll move onto improving and adding features to the game 👍
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 18, 2016
The question now is: Where in the world is Sean Murray? It’s not out of the ordinary for a game developer to go silent, especially when working on a game, but Murray had been incredibly outspoken about the game—until recently. There are two convincing theories that the Internet has come up with, and either of them could be the truth.
.@NoMansSky Twitter activity for the past 9 months. #NMS #Gamedev #indiedev #Dev pic.twitter.com/MzV9wUA0B8
— Eugene (@krylover) September 19, 2016
Several users on Reddit have suggested that Murray could simply be silent because he is busy working on the game. With Hello Games being such a small studio, this is not that much of a stretch, but Murray was incredibly vocal for 21 days after the game launched. It seems odd that he would have just now become so busy that he could not communicate with players (except to brag about how large his player base is, something he really shouldn’t be proud of considering many of the players are accusing him of misleading them).
Another possibility is that Murray is just too busy enjoying the millions of dollars that he’s made from the game. Imagine working with a small team of 15 close friends to create the game of your dreams and making more money than you have ever seen because of it. That would be pretty insane, right? Who cares that almost every gamer is upset with you for promising a game and then failing to deliver—they’re the suckers that bought your game and now you have enough money to be set for life. Seems like a perfect time to retreat from the spotlight and enjoy your new riches.
It is also possible that Murray could be planning to sue players for complaining about his game, like the developers we reported on last week. But I doubt he would want to commit such a disastrous digital suicide. In reality, Murray probably is working on making the game better and has just become a bit overwhelmed. I will admit that I find myself still playing No Man’s Sky (and as my Twitter bio states, I’m probably the only person still doing so), and I hope Murray and his team can get their act together to eventually bring us the game they promised.
