No Man’s Sky has all these online elements, where each individual player’s game is synched to a server, so that a persistent universe exists, one in which other players can stumble upon planets and landmarks you have discovered, while one where you can discover what other players got to before you.
However, it turns out the servers for the PC and PS4 versions of the game are kept separate- speaking on Reddit yesterday, Hello Games’ Sean Murray confirmed that both versions of the game are running on different servers. “We are running a control experiment to see who names things the most juvenile things… Let the games begin!” he joked.
He also tweeted a warning to players, asking them to remember that No Man’s Sky, in spite of its various online elements, is not a multiplayer game, and that going into it looking for something like that would be a recipe for disappointment.
“To be super clear – No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game. Please don’t go in looking for that experience. The chances of two players ever crossing paths in a universe this large is pretty much zero. We do have some online features and easter eggs so people can know they are playing in the same universe. It’s about cool ‘moments.'”
No Man’s Sky is available now on PS4, with a PC release coming later this week.