Bug? Currently in No Man’s Sky you can’t see other players

So much for it being multiplayer

[Update: Hello Games’ Sean Murray has responded to this situation, though he is still very vague.]

A redditor decided to do a little experiment in No Man’s Sky after landing on a planet named by another player and sending them a message to meet up. Upon going to the exact same location, they found out they couldn’t even see each other. Both players streamed the event as you can see in this screencap. 

This seems to be in stark contrast to what developer Hello Games founder Sean Murray said in an interview with Game Informer in 2014 where he discussed in detail meeting other players, how the lobby system would work, and even mentioning that players will look different than anything else you’ll see in the world.

That said, that interview was from two years go and lots can change in that amount of time (I wasn’t even at Dtoid two years ago!). Just yesterday, Murray tweeted the following:

To be super clear – No Man’s Sky is not a multiplayer game. Please don’t go in looking for that experience.

— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 8, 2016

Murray also had this to say about multiplayer in a post on the game’s official blog yesterday that explained what exactly you do in No Man’s Sky: “If you hoped for things like pvp multiplayer or city building, piloting freighters, or building civilisations… that isn’t what NMS is. Over time it might become some of those things through updates.”

Perhaps this is a bug, or maybe plans were changed and “multiplayer” is working as intended. At the time of writing, it is unclear. One thing is for sure, many people had the impression, myself included, that at least some simple form of multiplayer would exist in the game, and I think I’ve demonstrated why we would believe that. I don’t know about you, but I’m having Fable flashbacks.

You can’t see other players in No Man’s Sky [NeoGAF]