Hello Games’ Server And Twitter Were Briefly Hijacked This Afternoon

“No Man’s Sky was a mistake.” That’s what the Hello Games’ twitter account briefly posted on Twitter this afternoon, caused a flurry of responses of all kinds, but was soon taken down and their Twitter account made private. If that wasn’t sensational enough, it was the first thing that has been publicly heard from the studio since they effectively shut themselves off from the world at the end of August.

Responses to emails asking for comment then flip flopped between Sean Murray apparently taking responsibility for the tweet, or saying that it was a disgruntled employee. However, those replies have also been dismissed by a few tweets by Sean.

The nicest thing to all of this is that, while there are still a lot of people who are quite angry about No Man’s Sky’s form at launch, there’s also been a lot of concern and well wishing directed at Murray and the team at Hello Games.

No Man’s Sky didn’t live up to the hype and impossibly high expectations – we gave it a 7 – but we certainly wish them all the best. At the risk of sounding like a parent who hasn’t heard from their child at Uni for a couple of weeks, it’d just be nice to hear from them a bit more often.

Source: Twitter, Polygon

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20 Comments

  1. Does anyone else have an issue where an embedded tweet is positioned over the first line of text on the paragraph below? I noticed it on the other day’s News Snatch but thought it was a one-off.

    Anyway, Sony’s and Hello Games’s silence on the matter is embarrassing. They should at least acknowledge that they failed.

    • Same here with the tweet covering the text.

      But i can’t say Hello Games didn’t deliver on my own expectations, especially as they were never particularly forthcoming with actual details and it was always planned that new features and content would be added after launch. I didn’t preorder and i’ve enjoyed the game for 200 hours already.

    • I don’t consider it a failure, not with the amount of time I’ve put into it.

      The internet on the other hand is a completely different beast.

      The tweet/text combination works fine on Firefox 49.0.1

      • By “the internet”, you mean a small, loud part that were probably going to complain whatever happened anyway?

        Overall, it sold lots, got decent reviews, and most people were quite happy with it. Not really a failure at all.

        Oh, and the embedded tweet thing goes wrong with Chrome. Has been for ages, but I assumed being on the dev channel (56.something) was the issue.

      • I don’t think “A small Part” of the internet is the main source of criticism about NMS’s. I would say 80% of the userbase dislikes the game due to overhyping and it is the lies that is the main cause of NMS being a disappointment.

      • TheLoneSteven, 80% of the userbase? Really Everyone knows that 67% of all statistics are on average 43% inaccurate within a 23% tolerance.

      • When I stated “Everyone”, I really meant to say “84% of people”.

      • Am i correct in assuming you haven’t played it Steven?

      • Twas a rough estimate. I’ve not played it but have done research on it and the sheer amount of features that never made it into the final game after being promised they would be in is disgraceful. Overhyped, they did. Backlash happened and they basically did what a certain bald headed developer is infamous for doing.

      • Final game? Like the first version of Minecraft was the final game?
        I’m interested in seeing the details of your research, please provide links to all the evidence you’ve accrued. I’d hate to think I missed something and would graciously acknowledge any definitive proof that you can provide.

      • Here’s your evidence of the list of lies. http://www.onemanslie.info/the-original-reddit-post/

        The game we were sold was lied about repeatedly.

        It’s one thing to hype up a game, it’s another thing to explicitly state things about the game which are not true, and to continue doing so even as release approaches.

      • Well it lost 90% of it’s pc playerbase in 2 weeks, so it’s pretty clear what the majority thought of it. That’s not a vocal minority ranting on the internet, it’s people that actually paid for the game.

      • Ah, that reddit post that had a long list of “lies”, which turned out to be a list of “lies about NMS”, along with some things that changed during development (that really didn’t matter), and some things that were only promised in the minds of some people who seemed to imagine the game was going to be what they wanted it to be, not what Hello Games said it would be.

        Did the list not say things like “there’s no butterflies!”, which is (a) probably not really worth getting worked up about, and (b) a complete lie anyway.

      • All i’m asking for is definitive proof that any or all of those features were promised to be available at launch – and weren’t part of the planned additional content and features to be implemented post-launch.

      • Ah, the “nobody’s playing it on the PC” thing?

        Look at those handy websites that manage to get all the data from Steam. It’s sold 42,000 copies in the past 2 weeks, which seems pretty good for that sort of game. 50,000 people playing in those 2 weeks.

        Total sales, 805,000. Average total playtime, 23.5h.

        So if it’s that bad a game, it wouldn’t be selling that many copies still, and people wouldn’t have been playing it for 23.5h each.

        I suspect PS4 numbers would be even better too.

      • Yes, i’ve read about all those who played it for less than 2 hours in order to avail of the steam refund. Dismissing NMS after 2 hours is the equivalent of dismissing a game like COD or Titanfall after playing it for less than 2 mins imo.

        Regarding the hype, Hello Games were distinctly coy about confirming any details throughout, Sony’s only input was that they were treating it as an AAA title. That’s hardly what you could call hype.

      • Games tend to live and die by their first few hours. NMS gave a poor impression to most of it’s userbase and being repetitive to the point where it became boring for most folks is the cause of the playerbase abandoning it. HG overhyped a lot and they did release several videos with features that are not in the game.

  2. I meant to add, i assumed it would be common practise not to release any statement whilst there is an investigation pending.

  3. No Man’s Sky was awesome. Dont blame Hello Games because you cant control your own expectations. Damn hackers. We should build a wall around the internet to keep these unwanted pests out. A fire wall. Ha

  4. Long since abandoned by me, I’d consider it a mistake on my part.

    I’d be happy to go back to it with (many) new features implemented. I take back everything I said about Star Wars: Battlefront lacking content.

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