Despite Hello Games’ Sean Murray having stated numerous times prior to release that the chances of two players running into each other in No Man’s Sky were almost nil, such an event has already occurred. Just a day after release, no less.
The seemingly impossible feat was recorded over on Reddit, wherein user TheGalacticCactus discovered that a star system he travelled to had already been visited and named by another user: Psytokat. The former describes his surprise at the discovery, describing how he got in contact with Psytokat to arrange a meet-up.
I warped for the first time today. The Star system I landed in was discovered by a user named Psytokat… so I messaged him asking him to meet me at a space station. We are currently 4 systems away! We will meet at a space station.
Both explorers of the unknown frontier of space eventually found their way to the same space station for a meet and greet, but things didn’t exactly go to plan – neither player could see the other.
“We are 100 per cent in the same station same spot and everything and we cannot see each other,” said GalacticCactus, seemingly suggesting that no form of direct multiplayer is actually present in the current build of the game.
While Sean Murray has continually stated that No Man’s Sky is primarily a single-player title, he had previously told Stephen Colbert (via VideoGamer) that the only way for players to know what their own avatar looks like is for “somebody else to see you,” later confirming that players could run into each other but that “the chances of that are incredibly rare because of the size of what we’re building.”
It’s currently not clear whether the feature Murray described was scrapped during development, or if players can’t see each other due to a bug with No Man’s Sky code, but we’ll keep you updated as the story develops.