Hello Games' "No Man's Sky," one of the biggest letdowns of the video game year aside from "Pokemon Go," continues to find itself in even more controversy. After many players rated the game poorly for being a sparse, monotonous experience despite its vast procedurally-generated galaxy, it's taking heat for not actually being a multiplayer game.
As one of the vendors of the game through the PlayStation Store, Sony has commented on the issues surrounding the game. Express reports that Sony is claiming that they never advertised "No Man's Sky" as a multiplayer game, always focusing on it as a single-player experience.
In an e-mail the company sent to PixelVulture, they claim that "there was no mention of multiplayer" in "No Man's Sky" store description. It's technically correct, but the game's promotion was still misleading.
However, this statement directly contradicts Hello Games' and its co-founder Sean Murray's promotion of "No Man's Sky" as both a completely random universe and a game in which players can find each other and trade. They claim that it is possible for two people to meet, regardless of just how vast the galaxy is.
Despite that, no two players have actually met in "No Man's Sky" as of this writing. The most egregious instance is two players landing on the same planet, stumbling upon the same settlement, but still not seeing each other.
Murray ended up backtracking on his comments, saying that "No Man's Sky" wasn't multiplayer per se, but a game full of "shared experiences." That's a silly backpedal that isn't really fooling anyone, and now Hello Games is being investigated by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority.
"No Man's Sky" was released for the PlayStation 4 and the PC back in August. The game did enjoy some momentum thanks to the huge hype it received coming in, but as soon as players quickly discovered the gameplay's monotony, it started to receive bad reviews. The completely random universe was noble, but the noblety didn't really last long.
