Yesterday, we wrote about the multiplayer confusion that’s entangled the launch of the sandboxy No Man’s Sky (commenter JonBuck called it “Schrödinger’s Multiplayer”). Adding more brambles is a new piece from Rock Paper Shotgun that suggests the game might have been intended to be a bit more online than Hello Games is letting on, as it shows what’s under the PEGI 7 rating sticker on the limited edition box: an online play icon.
https://imgur.com/a/L9PRE#n37nPCc
To be clear, you can play the game offline, and “online play” may have been in reference to online/shared universe elements like planet names, but that might have been deemed misleading. Or maybe calling pure DRM “online play” was too much a stretch. Or maybe the multiplayer part is still just not working properly. We still don’t know. (RPS also pointed out yesterday that Hello Games isn’t responding to media requests for more information, hence the continuing mystery.)
