The No Man’s Sky saga took a rather bizarre turn earlier this afternoon when a now-pulled Tweet labelled the ambitious space exploration title “a mistake.”
Not only that, but scores of PR emails were sent to various press outlets ‘apologizing’ for the controversial release, which was the first flicker of life from both Hello Games and the studio’s social feeds in over a month. Polygon then received a message from someone claiming to be studio head Sean Murray, stating “the Tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down. We have not been coping well.” Sources close to Kotaku have now confirmed that both were the result of a technical breach that has now been traced back to Sean Murray’s LinkedIn profile.
Starting from the top, here’s the now-deleted Tweet from Hello Games’ Twitter account that surfaced online around 1:48 GMT. What follows is two responses from the studio, effectively confirming that both messages were entirely fake. “100% not hacked anymore,” writes Hello Games.
.@NoMansSky 100% not hacked anymore… obviously those mails and that tweet were fake. Back to work ??????
— Hello Games (@hellogames) October 28, 2016
If anything was a mistake, it was using Linked In without 2FA.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) October 28, 2016
No Man’s Sky emerged in August following multiple delays and a lavish marketing campaign that wasn’t without its faults. The real issue lies with Hello Games, though, after demonstrating a series of in-game features – online play included – prior to release that didn’t make it into the final build, hence the pent-up frustration. Whether today’s hack signals a means for the studio to connect with the wanting fanbase is another question altogether.
