No Man's Sky, with its 18 quintillion planets, is a not a game where players will meet up very often. Indeed, exploration is the central theme, but it's not a multiplayer game in the standard sense.
Hello Games has repeatedly stressed this, telling players several times that they shouldn't expect a traditional multiplayer experience. It is, however, an online game, with players existing in the same universe, and it didn't take long for two people to find each other in this galaxy-wide adventure.
"That has blown my mind," Sean Murray said on Twitter after the meeting. "We added a 'scan for other players' in the Galactic Map to try to encourage this happening. We wanted it to happen - but the first day?"
Murray then continued: "We want people to be aware they are in a shared universe. We added online features, and some Easter Eggs to create cool moments. We hope to see those happening... but too many of you are playing right now. More than we could have predicted.
"It is a testament to how amazing our network coders are that Discoveries are still working at all. For instance over night we hit 10 million species discovered in NMS... that's more than has been discovered on earth. WHAT IS GOING ON!!!"
The encounter took place between two people, when TheGalacticCactus landed on a planet discovered previously by Psytokat. Messages were exchanged and the players agreed to meet up, but when they finally made it to the same location, it turned out that they couldn't see each other.
"We are 100 per cent In the same station same spot and everything and we cannot see each other," TheGalacticCactus wrote on Reddit, which is currently awash with theories as to why they couldn't see each other.
It's worth noting, that while the players were in the same place at the same time, they were at different points in the respective planet's day/night cycle. Make of that what you will.
Back to Sean Murray, who just yesterday said: "To be super clear - No Man's Sky is not a multiplayer game. Please don't go in looking for that experience. The chances of two players ever crossing paths in a universe this large is pretty much zero."