Sean Murray Speaks: Regrets, Death Threats, & Players Returning to No Man’s Sky

Two years since the disastrous launch of No Man’s Sky and total seclusion from the media, Sean Murray has spoken to UK newspaper The Guardian to discuss the troubled history of No Man’s Sky and its future.

Days before the launch of a massive new update titled NEXT, in which players will finally get to traverse the procedurally generated galaxy in the multiplayer capacity, Murray broke his silence about the mood at Hello Games in the days after the game’s original launch.

“We didn’t talk about it, but it was as bad as things can get, basically,” Murray said. “I remember getting a death threat about the fact that there were butterflies in our original trailer, and you could see them as you walked past them, but there weren’t any butterflies in the launch game. I remember thinking to myself: ‘Maybe when you’re sending a death threat about butterflies in a game, you might be the bad guy.'”

Despite the ludicrous behavior of these upset fans, Murray did admit to regretting his part in the poor handling of the game’s PR, suggesting that he was “naive and overly excited” about No Man’s Sky.

Hello Games has since put their heads down and worked tirelessly to produce three huge updates for the game, the most substantial of which, the upcoming NEXT, arrives on July 24. Updates such as Atlas Rises have already fleshed out the experience with 30 hours of new story content, base building, and a host of improvements to performance. Notably, it also added a basic multiplayer feature that was actually supposed to be in the original package.

“A very light multiplayer was envisioned for launch, and we fought right up until the end to add it,” he explains. When the feature finally did make it to No Man’s Sky last year, Hello Games claim that around a million players returned to for the Atlas Rises update.

Despite the controversy of the game’s launch, Murray reiterated how proud he was of the team at Hello Games. He also suggested that if they had delayed the game for two years, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.

Stay tuned for Twinfinite’s impressions of the NEXT update when it launches next week. Head over to The Guardian for the full interview with Sean Murray.