No Man’s Sky was a huge hit commercially, if not critically. The game was the best-selling release on the PlayStation Store last month, and Steamspy has estimated there are approximately 743,000 owners of the game on Steam. While neither Sony nor Hello Games has announced any official numbers, the initial sales were huge, even if they may have tapered off quickly.

The game was marketed brilliantly, but the initial reception from the vocal online fans was ruinous. Hello Games hasn’t tweeted since Aug. 27, and Sean Murray hasn’t tweeted since Aug. 18. There’s not a lot of information about what is going on with the game, and many of the game’s "fans" continuing to post about how the developer operated in bad faith when discussing the game’s online features.

The story isn’t over, but for now ... what have we learned?

You lose control by not sending review copies

This is counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

Review copies of No Man’s Sky, or rather, download codes, weren’t sent to the press ahead of release. This led to some speculation about whether no early reviews meant the game was bad, but the reality was that the game wasn’t done. Hello Games didn’t want people playing the game before the day-one patch.

But review copies are more or less how developers and publishers enforce embargoes. They give the press an early copy of the game, and the press agrees not to write about the game until a certain date. This usually isn’t a terrible thing, because early copies of games combined with a workable embargo means that no one has an incentive to rush their coverage.

Since No Man’s Sky wasn’t sent out, there was no embargo in place, and outlets who were able to get copies of the game, including Polygon, were free to stream the pre-patched game. Copies of the game existed in the wild before launch, so Sony could have avoided this whole situation by simply sending copies to the press in exchange for agreeing to the embargo.

Without early copies being sent through official channels, there were no agreements in place, leading to so much of the game being shown or streamed before launch. Early copies leads to better coverage, which helps the readers, while also giving the developers more control over timing of that coverage. It’s a better solution for everyone, even though this means some people may play games before the day-one patch.

It’s weird to think that Sony could have stopped people from writing about the game by sending it to them, but that’s the reality of the situation. It's very possible that other publishers will learn from this situation and get games into the hands of press earlier as a way to prevent leaks.

Every feature you mention is a promise

I don’t want to re-litigate Sean Murray's interviews and what he did or didn’t promise by talking about features that ultimately didn’t make it into the game, but the reality is that people are angry and feel mistreated. They’ve pored over every video appearance and print interview for evidence that he lied or mislead them.

And I mean, the results are pretty damning.

Many of these videos have high numbers of views from accounts with low numbers of subscribers. The videos are getting their views organically, and are dominating search results. It’s a bad look.

I adore No Man’s Sky, but these video had me sucking air through my teeth. This is the tone of so much of the online conversation around the game: Angry, hurt and betrayed.

E3 demos are often complete bullshit and features are added and dropped throughout development, but most developers are aware of both facts and don’t call attention to the former and tread carefully around the latter. It's a survival mechanism as much as a question of PR.

This is why developers who work on triple-A franchises, the games that are under the most scrutiny from press and the fans, stick to talking points and a carefully constructed news cycle. In most cases they won’t bring up anything they’re not absolutely sure will be in the game. Each new character or feature discussed is approved by management.

Even Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, has commented on Murray's struggles with the press.

"I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one," Yoshida told Eurogamer. "It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer. But he says their plan is to continue to develop No Man's Sky features and such, and I'm looking forward to continuing to play the game."

So what did we learn from this situation? First, most games from smaller teams would be extremely fortunate to have the level of interest and hype that No Man’s Sky enjoyed. Second, this situation could be avoided by being more transparent about things that may or may not make it into the final game. Developers may think the statement "this game is still being worked on, so stuff may get dropped" is understood implicitly, but No Man's Sky has taught us that no, it is not. If you bring it up without some heavy caveats, you are making a promise, whether you like it or not.

Look at this response Murray gave Rock Paper Shotgun about online play and community. He tries to temper expectations while also speaking about in-game interaction in an ambiguous way.

"...We really try to play that down, I think. And you’ve said about us playing down the hype, right?" says Murray. "We could sell that aspect of it and it’s a very appealing thing – it’s a giant MMO! – but it’s not. Even if it is, it’s a terrible one. It’s a really terrible multiplayer game. If you want that experience, if you want deathmatch and that MMO progression there are so many more better games for that. For us what we’re after is a more Journey-esque experience. Even if you come across somebody you won’t even know if they were AI or if they were a player. We just want to create some moments but that’s all. The universe is so big it would be really rare."

There's much to unpack here. He's stating that the game is a "terrible" multiplayer game, while they're aiming for a "Journey-esque" experience. Is that a lie? Or just a statement about what they were trying to created in the middle of 2015? In what way can you "come across somebody" in the final game?

Even when Murray is careful to try to rein in interviews to discuss what he hoped the game would be or what they're trying to do, he seems unable to stop making lofty claims about what may make it into the game. If Murray did have a PR person in the room, as is customary for most interviews about games this hyped, it's very possible they would have jumped in with clarifying statements and wiggle words after that exchange.

Which isn't great, we don't need smaller teams to become less guarded. In many ways we'd prefer larger teams to become less grounded, it helps us learn about games and write more interesting stories. But the internet, taking collectively, will often punish those who don't learn to speak very carefully about their heavily anticipated games.

If things go wrong after interest in your game explodes, people will go through every single communication you have ever released in order to make you look as bad as possible. In many cases it seems like Sean Murray believed he was playing the role of an enthusiastic member of a small team, while the reality was that his words were being held under the same punishing light fans usually reserve for the latest Call of Duty.

There are ways to learn about games after release

I’m going to say something that’s kind of controversial these days: No Man’s Sky is a really good game.

I also agree with most of the criticism surrounding No Man’s Sky. There’s a reason these articles are plastered with the word "opinion," and I’ve recently written about how one person’s criticisms of a game are often attractive to someone else. We all have different tastes when it comes to games, and No Man’s Sky fits mine ... no matter what the developer said before release.

If a musician told me there wouldn’t be theremin on a record and later it was revealed to be silly with theremin sounds, that’s fine by me. I dig the theremin. But that has more to do with my taste than the issue of pre-release theremin transparency.

There are multiple figurative versions of No Man’s Sky out there: There is the game that Hello Games tried to make, and no artistic endeavor survives the path from idea to completion intact or unchanged. There is the game that was sold to us, with visuals that don’t quite match up to the released version of the game and discussed features and ideas that didn’t ultimately ship with No Man’s Sky. Lastly, there’s the game that exists today, that you can buy in stores or via Steam and other online storefronts.

Setting aside what you wanted the game to be, news broke about the reality of what the game was pretty much instantly. The idea that No Man’s Sky was some sort of all-experience that would make everyone happy was well-smashed the first day of release. It wasn't hidden from players by any means, and in fact it was nearly impossible to avoid stories about No Man's Sky for a week or two. I wrote many of them!

I don’t really care if you read Polygon coverage or reviews, although I hope you do. You may have another site you like more, or a favorite YouTuber. Heck, you may not like any professional or amateur critic and prefer to read the thoughts of other players on message boards. But it’s always safer to wait for those initial thoughts, if not reviews, before buying a game.

Much of the anger I’ve seen online comes down to the idea that people were promised one game and sold another, although there were literally hundreds if not thousands of articles written on that first day that did a pretty good job of explaining how weird and niche the final game ultimately felt. Buying a game on the first day, especially one that’s been hyped has heavily and as long as No Man’s Sky, is a risk. You can mitigate that risk by taking a deep breath and waiting a day to see what other people think.

And never, for the love of god, pre-order games.