The highly anticipated space adventure game, No Man’s Sky, will have all of it’s servers wiped clean before it’s launch. The wipe comes courtesy of a number of No Man’s Sky’s copies getting leaked out to the general public before it’s official launch.
All of this started when one fan got their hands on the game early by paying over a thousand dollars for it, after which, they proceeded to post gameplay videos online. Then, a number of retailers broke street dates and sold retail copies of the game to major publications before the official release date of 9th August. Both Kotaku and Polygon have posted videos online, and they are able to do so because they purchased copies of the game themselves.
To explain a bit further, when websites receive review copies of games from publishers, they are bound by embargo restrictions as to when they can post reviews or impressions of the game online. If someone buys a game themselves, they are not bound by any such restrictions and are free to do as they like.
Apparently, Hello Games was going to send out copies of the games to reviewers, but they weren’t going to receive them until the actual release date. According to Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, the reason for the lack of review copies is that the developers are working on a day-one patch for the game, and anything before that is “not what players will experience”.
If you are reviewing/playing our game without our update, on a leaked copy, then please don't. It's not what players will experience.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 6, 2016
So in the end, all online discoveries will be completely wiped, but players will retain game saves.
No Man’s Sky is set to release on the 9th and 12th of August for the PlayStation 4 and PC respectively. The game’s soundtrack was also recently made available online, which you can check out here.
