A tweet from Hello Games co-founder and No Man’s Sky director Sean Murray stating that the game was “a mistake” was written while the account was hacked, according to a statement from Hello Games. After reports initially suggested the comment was genuine, the developer clarified that the tweet was from “a disgruntled employee” who hacked Murray’s accounts.
The incident has caused more confusion than the average social media account hack, primarily because the hacker not only published the tweet, but impersonated Murray and commented on the tweet to a reporter. Shortly after the tweet was deleted, Polygon reached out to Hello Games, and an email allegedly coming from Murray himself responded, stating he was responsible for the post.
“The tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down,” Murray’s email said. “We have not been coping well.”
The Twitter account briefly went private, but Murray stated in a separate response message to Forbes that he was, in fact, not responsible for the tweet, and it actually came from a “disgruntled employee.”
Since re-activating the account, Murray said that the company’s server was hacked. The employee used LinkedIn to post the tweet, according to the statement.
No Man’s Sky launched back in August for PlayStation 4 and PC, and players soon accused developer Hello Games and Steam creator Valve of misrepresenting the game to the public. The Advertising Standards Authority, an independent consumer advocacy group in the UK, has opened in investigation into the game based on those complaints.
In our review, we said that the game was “too grand for its own good” and that its wondrous “sense of discovery” didn’t last very long. For a game with billions and billions of planets, they essentially all feature the same few ingredients, and the “objectives” in the game are too vague to keep your attention for an extended amount of time.
No Man’s Sky has seen a significant player drop-off in the few months since its release, with PC players per hour dropping from nearly 200,000 to only 2,123.
