All is not well at Hello Games it would seem after this morning a statement was posted on the studio's Twitter account that simply said: "No Man's Sky was a mistake."
The offending tweet was promptly taken down, but statements sent out to Forbes and Polygon seemed to indicate that it was Hello frontman Shaun Murray himself that posted the message:
"The tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down. We have not been coping well," Murray apparently wrote via his personal email address.
However, Mashable have since revealed that the whole episode is no more than a hoax, the result of a hack, as a new post on Twitter from Sean Murray's account confirms:
"Server hacked. We're binging Mr Robot Episodes as quickly as we can looking for answers. Ep05 is a cracker."
It looks like the tweet might have been made via Murray's LinkedIn account, which is linked to the Twitter account in question. As for the replies received by various outlets, Mashable had the hack confirmed via an email sent from Hello Games, not Murray's private account.
Whether or not it was genuine or not (and it certainly looks like a hoax), it once again throws No Man's Sky into the spotlight. The game has proved divisive since it launched earlier this year, with many players disgruntled by the absence of features in the final build that were promised ahead of launch.
This latest episode only adds fuel to fire, and further shows the lack of goodwill surrounding the studio following the release of a game that was heavily marketed ahead of launch, but that ultimately failed to deliver on its promise.