No Man’s Sky isn’t really multiplayer, yet – but developers promise future ‘easter eggs’

Developers have said that the chances of meeting other people were so low that the game is basically single player – except it has happened

The world of No Man's Sky is populated – partly – by huge ships

No Man’s Sky is the biggest game universe ever created. But nobody’s really sure whether they’re alone in it.

Players are still trying to work out whether or not the game is single player, or if they might run into other people while inside of its universe.

Initially, developers had said that the question was mostly moot because the huge scale of the universe – which is made up of 18 billion billion planets, generated by an algorithm – meant that people wouldn’t run into each other anyway.

But then in the first day of the game’s release, two players did actually find each other. Their experience of coming into contact with one another was live streamed – and when they arrived at the same place, they couldn’t see each other.

After that happened, creator Sean Murray tweeted to say that his mind had been “blown” by two players finding each other on the first day – but that there wasn’t a traditional multiplayer situation.

Mr Murray has repeatedly referenced games like Journey and Dark Souls. Both of those have some multiplayer elements, despite also working as single player games – and it appears that similar things can be triggered in the No Man’s Sky universe.

The game’s developers have repeatedly said that new features can be added to it with updates through time.

Just before the game was released, Mr Murray warned player that “No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game. Please don’t go in looking for that experience”.

He again referenced the fact that the universe was so large that the “chances of two players ever crossing paths in a universe this large is pretty much zero”.

But he again referenced “some online features and easter gas so people can know they are playing in the same universe. It’s about cool ‘moments’,” he wrote.

Some videos have been shared online of creator Sean Murray apparently indicating that it was possible to meet other players – suggesting that was the only way that people would ever see themselves.

That is part of what appears to be a small backlash against the game, from players who had hoped that they would be able to find and see their friends within the game’s huge universe.