Earlier today, a tweet was sent from the Hello Games account for the first time in a month. It read, simply, “No Man’s Sky was a mistake.” This lead immediately to a flurry of questions towards Hello Games via email from various outlets. The account replied to different outlets with different stories, leading to further confusion until Sean Murray tweeted from his personal account that their server had been hacked.
Read more: the best PC games of 2016 so far.
Here’s how Murray responded about twenty minutes after the initial tweet:
Server hacked. We're binging Mr Robot Episodes as quickly as we can looking for answers. Ep05 is a cracker
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) 28 October 2016
The “mistake” tweet was sent via LinkedIn, hence early theories that it was a hack due to their recent security problems. This was confirmed in a followup from Murray:
If anything was a mistake, it was using Linked In without 2FA.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) 28 October 2016
Further confusion was caused by various outlets receiving different replies to their requests for more info. Polygon got one from someone claiming to be Murray, saying that he had sent the tweet and the company had “not been coping well” since release. Forbes were told it was a disgruntled employee, as were mashable. Kotaku writer Jason Schreier also said on Twitter they’d received contradictory information. These, it’s now assumed, were emails sent from compromised accounts on the Hello Games server.
Not the best day over in Guildford, though probably not the worst they’ve had in the last couple of months either. We’ve reached out for further comment, though at this point who knows if what we get back will even be from them. Are we even real? Stay tuned to PCGamesN for further existential worries.