Should we be surprised that months of radio silence that Sean Murray's Twitter comes back to life with talk of server hacks following a mysterious tweet of "No Man's Sky was a mistake" on the Hello Games Twitter? Should we be even more surprised that the tweet could have been that from a "disgruntled employee" of Hello Games that could maybe have been Murray himself? I can't say I'm that surprised - if anything, I suspect Murray could be losing his mind? Maybe we're all losing our minds? Hmm.

Kotaku do an excellent job of covering this here with links to Forbes (adblock unfriendly) and Mashable of other details behind this lunacy. I'm sure more details will come out soon - most likely is that someone got into Sean Murray's Linkedin and tweeted there via the linked account. Maybe. Judging by the comments on those tweets, seems like a lot of angry folk are still pissed.

This whole debacle has been a persistent reminder that I kinda hate the Internet.

I love how easily people can come up with a narrative with 0 information to back it up.

It's a cold reminder that this was a dude, a regular dude, who had a passion project that the world rejected..

That's got to be hard on a guy

He had a project he continually lied about and then released the game with footage clearly not representative of the final product.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/

They still haven't changed that trailer. Unbelievable!

There's an archive of that tweet here: https://archive.is/WcL1a

I don't disagree he's just a regular guy but you make it sound like it was just a case of releasing a game people didn't like, as opposed to the game being a janky, buggy mess with missing content and features.

Tamoor Hussain in the tweet replies...that guy, some people in games media really, really suck.

The amount of vitriol around this okay chill-out game is baffling.

I am by no means defending any of this, what I mean is can you imagine something that you poured your life into for the past 5 years or so and you had so much belief in (too much in Murrays case) got rejected. It's a thought that make me worries for someone like him

The scope of the 'bizarre goings-on' around this game is, has, and always will be the way this game is meant to make you feel: infinitesimally fucking small.

"MAN MAY OR MAY NOT REGRET CAREER CHOICE"

What a total non-story. People in the community around video games need to take a step back from time to time and wonder if the things that get them heated even matter. Like, say, whether or not this game is good.

People get way too invested with entertainment products.

@ichthy said:

It's almost like some kind of horrible feedback loop where folk get hyped up for upcoming games which is then fuel for marketing men to stoke up even more hype from those folk. The weird thing is that people have short memories and it doesn't take long before they get all hyped up again without remembering what happened previously.

This Twitterstorm only outlines how chronically poor the communications of Hello Games and Sean Murray have been in recent times towards their customers. Remember when Hello Games were liked by almost everyone for their Joe Dangers? Memorieeeeessss...

Almost as if our medium is a haven for fandom. It's not like film and music is above such chicanery. We just see an awful lot of it, maybe because of the money involved. And now Joe Average can vent to youtube.

The fact that this isn't exclusive to video games doesn't weaken the potency of this particular kind of stupidity. Any fan of any medium has bigger, sadder issues if that medium releases content that disappoints them so deeply that they want to hurt the creator.

Who cares anymore seriously let the game die.

@dudeglove: What's the other contenders?

The story that keeps on giving. There has never been a game studio that I want more desperately to be a fly on the wall of.

The lesson here is that nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of information people are perfectly happy to fill the void with misinformation. This whole fiasco has been begging for some response for months, but Hello Games/Sean Murray have said not a peep in nigh on forever. It's not surprising that something like this happened.

As it turns out, not too many people. At least it still has more players on PC than Battleborn does.

Yeah I'd feel sorry for him more myself if it wasn't for all the shady stuff around it.

Obviously he is just a guy though and people get too wrapped up in their outrage.

I can't believe how much enjoyment I'm getting out of No Man's Sky as someone that hasn't played a minute of it.

Sounds like the moral of this story is to turn on 2FA on everything.

If the game wasn't $60, Hello Games/No Man's Sky would be avidly impressing everyone.
As this stands, I hope there is some kind of action against them and we all get our money back.

@pickassoreborn: I like the idea that WE are the ones going insane. :)

@avenlaya: Sony vr by the looks of it

I wonder how fable would have faired in todays social media driven society?

People like having something to get angry about. And I don't mean it as some sort of dismissive, sarcastic remark either. I mean that even though it's probably subconscious, there are people who, for whatever reason, derive some sort of pleasure from anger.

I think of this and all of the Molyneux promises over the years every time NMS comes up.

Everything about No Man's Sky is a real bummer, and I'm sure people who paid full price feel shafted, but I am so ready to let this whole crazy thing die.

I think it's still meaningful to discuss the impact. It is a first example of a small team and game getting too much coverage and hype. Also showed that maybe the EU laws that was one of the reasons Steam introduced refunds should maybe be more harsh. How the internet always wants to laserfocus blame instead of distributing blame more fairly.

But whatever is happening with their twitter is nothing more than a fluff piece for online publications to get in some extra clicks.

No Man's Sky came and went. It wasn't all that. Now let's leave it in the rearview mirror, and leave Sean Murray alone. He's more than paid his price for whatever people put on him.

@dudeglove: i know it's mostly for laughs, but i'd like to see a focus more on positivity for once on what was a year full of great games.

@yesiamaduck: I cant believe they still have that trailer. I understand showing an early video of how you envision your final game to look but having a video of CGI pretending to be gameplay on a released game should not be allowed on steam.

I think it's worth mentioning that Hello Games haven't patched the terrible PC version in almost two months. The studio and Sean are going to have a rough time garnering any trust again. The whole Mr. Robot drama with their subreddit is hilarious though.

@wynnduffy: They apparently released a beta patch 2 weeks ago on Steam and GoG, so they're still working on it.

Also, wasn't the PC version running pretty good within a week or so of the launch? Was for me anyway.