No Man’s Sky definitely doesn’t seem to contain multiplayer
It looks like No Man’s Sky will not contain multiplayer despite the developer’s statements. So far, there has been no mention of any player meeting. In addition, intercepted communications with the servers would indicate that no location data is being sent.
A NeoGAF user with username Gossi did a packet capture on both versions of the game on Saturday. According to his observations, hardly any data is sent to the No Man’s Sky servers. He was unable to view the actual content of the data stream to the servers because it is encrypted. He bases his statements on the moments at which data is sent. When the player moves through the universe of the game, according to him, nothing is sent. All that would be sent would be data on the given names of planets and their fauna. That is the only way in which the presence of other players can be noticed.
No Man’s Sky is now available for six days on Sunday for PlayStation 4 and three days for Windows. Since the releases, there has also been no mention of two players being able to see each other in the game. Two players on the PlayStation 4 managed to travel to the exact same location in the game at the same time, but the two couldn’t see each other at all. In addition, it was daytime on one player and night on the other.
Another piece of evidence that seems to indicate that there is no multiplayer in the game can be seen when players pause the game. The entire game world will then stop until the player continues the game. Sony has also indicated that no PS Plus is required for the PS4 version of the game, but it was believed that this was because it would be so extremely rare for two players to run into each other. In addition, the European packaging of the PlayStation 4 version even includes a multiplayer logo covered with a sticker. That suggests that the function should have been there, but it didn’t make it at the very last moment.
One theory that players don’t see each other could be that because of the game’s popularity, the servers are overloaded and therefore the feature doesn’t work. However, the two PlayStation 4 players did verify that they were connected to the servers during their experiment, for example. Another possible explanation for the lack of multiplayer is that the feature will be added at a later time. However, without a statement from the developer about this, this cannot be said with certainty.
The confusion surrounding the game’s multiplayer stems from statements Sean Murray, head of developer Hello Games, made during interviews with multiple different media outlets. For example, he stated on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that “the only way you can find out what you look like is by having someone else look at you” and that “the chances of meeting someone else are very small because the game is so big.” So the chance would certainly exist.
Surprisingly, Murray has recognized that two players have already “found” each other in the game, but he doesn’t elaborate on why they can’t see each other. On August 8, a single day before the first release, he did post a tweet in which he said: “Just to make it very clear – No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game, so please don’t go looking for that experience.” That statement and the findings of players seem to make it final that there is no multiplayer in the game, but the developer only still ignores the contradiction of his own statements. Murray is active on Twitter and communicates a lot about the technical issues with the game, but when it comes to multiplayer, he keeps complete radio silence.
The video starts at the moment when Murray states that players can meet and see each other