No Man’s Sky has faced a lot of controversy since its launch. One of the most criticized aspect of the game was its apparent lack of multiplayer even though the game director, Sean Murray, had promised that players would be able to interact with each other in the game. This wasn’t available at launch leading to a backlash against the game that was, among other things, one of the major factor in the game’s post-launch reputation.
Since the game has released in last August, the developers have released 2 major content updates with the latest one arriving just today. One of the interesting feature that is mentioned in the patch notes is the inclusion of online multiplayer. This was never teased earlier so its inclusion has come as a surprise for the fans of the game.
Despite the addition of multiplayer, the developers are still calling it the first step towards co-op in the game and in its current form, the multiplayer only visualizes the player as floating blue orbs with voice over IP support so you can connect with them. The official description on the website clears out any confusion that the user might have for the game’s multiplayer.
Glitches in the simulation have begun to appear.
Visualised by strange floating orbs, up to 16 players can see and communicate with one another, and explore the universe together.
While interaction with others is currently very limited, this is an important first step into the world of synchronous co-op in No Man’s Sky.
While interaction is very limited, VOIP (Voice over IP) allows proximity based voice chat with other nearby explorers.
Use portals to quickly travel to more populated planets, or to meet up with friends.
So the next agenda on the developer’s list is to add synchronous co-op in No Man’s Sky and this appears to be just the early form of the multiplayer. Still, it is nice for the developers to deliver on the promises that they made before the launch of the game, even if took them one whole year to do so. Hopefully this can satisfy the game’s fans until the full thing arrives at a later date.
