Nearly two years after it first launched, the space exploration game No Man’s Sky will finally get a proper multiplayer mode, developer Hello Games said last night.
Speaking on the Inside Xbox YouTube show, No Man’s Sky director Sean Murray said that alongside the upcoming Xbox One launch on July 24, the game will start allowing players to work and fight alongside one another. Although No Man’s Sky did get a multiplayer update last August, that was very rudimentary, with players only represented as glowing orbs on one another’s screens. This is the real thing.
Here’s how Hello Games describes it in a press release:
Explore the infinite universe with your friends, or bump into random travellers
As you voyage together, friends will help you stay alive, or prey on others to survive
Build bases from tiny shelters to complex colonies that you create as a team and can be seen by the community
Be a pirate or a wingman in epic space battles with friends and foes
Race exocraft across weird alien terrains and create tracks to share online
“That’s always been the potential I think everyone could see in what we were making, it’s been a lot of hard work, but thanks to the team and the community we are so glad to finally able to make it a reality,” wrote Murray on the company’s website.
No Man’s Sky has been a controversial game, in large part due to Murray’s messages to press, which painted the picture of something far more ambitious than what actually shipped. The biggest controversy involved a statement that Murray had made indicating that players would be able to see one another’s character models if they wound up on the same planet. When the game launched, in August 2016, players found out that wasn’t the case.
Since then, Murray and Hello Games have put out a large number of patches to No Man’s Sky, adding new features, including “joint exploration,” which allowed players to finally meet up and see one another. Now, it appears that No Man’s Sky will get the type of robust multiplayer that fans have wanted since before the game shipped.
“Something I’ve learned is that I much prefer making games to talking about them,” Murray added.
‘No Man’s Sky’ is getting multiplayer this July and you gotta respect Hello Games’ hustle
After No Man’s Sky dropped and was an abject fucking disappointment for most, it seemed sensible to not have high hopes for it. However, man, I respect Hello Games and Sean Murphy for patching this game into something if not as special as promised, at least very enjoyable.
I never played it in its initial iteration, but I become more and more tempted as time passes.