With No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games continuing to maintain a radio silence regarding the poor reception to their over-hyped space exploration game, those still playing – or at least still discussing – the space exploration title have been left to talk among themselves. As those with any experience of a gaming community will know, this is the very worst thing that a development team can leave their community to do, with further evidence of this being revealed today after the No Man’s Sky subreddit was closed down by a moderator who was sick of the negativity surrounding the game.
No Man’s Sky launched to an underwhelming response from critics and consumers alike, with many going on to claim that Hello Games and founder Sean Murray were guilty of false advertising, with it going on to become one of the biggest gaming controversies of the entire year. However, all of this negativity never received an official response from Murray nor the rest of the Hello Games team, with them instead continuing to quietly release patches for the game as everyone wondered what had gone wrong, where the game that was debuted during the VGX Awards was, and what the future of No Man’s Sky would be.
As such, the No Man’s Sky unofficial subreddit – which was known on the internet for holding an almost cult-like reverence for the game prior to its release – began to transform into a hub for people to instead complain about the final product, as the controversy surrounding the game continued to grow following its release. This brings us to today, when one of the subreddit’s moderators R0ugeWolf revealed that they had decided to wipe the sub of all of its content, making the following announcement:
“So I purged the subreddit. It’s become a hate filled wastehole of no actual discussion. It’s not what we intended it to be and I don’t like providing a platform for hate. I’m sorry to everyone who used the subreddit as intended but you are now in the majority. I’m sure you can find a different place to discuss this game. It’s not hard.
This was my decision and mine alone. The other moderators tried to sway my opinion but cynicism got the best of me as usual.”
Hours later, the subreddit was reopened with another post, with moderator Sporkicide writing:
“I know the past few hours have been confusing. I’ve been reviewing the situation and working with /u/r0ugew0lf to determine the needs of this community and how the admins can help meet them. He’s been an enormous help and I appreciate him working with us during a difficult time. He’s going to take a break and has handed the reins over to me to get the subreddit restarted. I’ve extended invitations to some of the previous moderators to get things started and will likely be needing some additional help.
At the core of things, this is a subreddit and a community centered around No Man’s Sky. I’m asking everyone here to participate in good faith and leave any frustration with the recent situation at the door.”
But because the ill-feeling towards Hello Games continues to linger, it wasn’t long before the subreddit’s users began hypothesizing that the developer had a hand in the closure of the subreddit in the first place. The top-rated post on the subreddit following this drama states that “old mods should not be reinstated,” adding: “There is a conflict of interest going on. We need to be sure they don’t work for the Frauds at Hello Games.”
While it’s beyond illogical that Hello Games would be involved in this Reddit controversy (after all, the subreddit remained active around the time of the game’s launch when it was receiving the most amount of negative comments, and right now the player base for the game has dwindled to the point where shutting down its most active community wouldn’t exactly be a smart move on their behalf), this is more evidence of what can happen when you don’t maintain an open dialogue with the community surrounding your game. This year we’ve seen two backlashes against developers refusing to communicate with their player base, with both Pokemon Go‘s Niantic Labs and Hello Games coming under fire for not outlining their plans post-release and failing to engage with those playing their games. As No Man’s Sky continues to generate more controversy nearly two months following its release, you’d have to believe that this wouldn’t be the case if Hello Games simply addressed those who had invested in their game.
