Update: Polygon
reports that Sean Murray himself has taken credit for the Tweet. In an email from his personal account he writes, “The tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down. We have not been coping well.” Whether Murray’s email has been hacked, or the entirety of Hello Games has been hacked, or Murray was indeed the disgruntled employee remains unclear. It certainly does appear to be the case, however.
Curiouser and curiouser…
Update 2: Mashable got
the same response as I did, but Sean Murray signed it (the email to yours truly was unsigned.) So…this is almost too bizarre to wrap my head around.
Update 3: Sean Murray is on Twitter saying their servers were hacked. Whether this means earlier correspondence was fake—or if they’re still hacked and this is also fake—is sort of hard to say at this point.
Server hacked. We’re binging Mr Robot Episodes as quickly as we can looking for answers. Ep05 is a cracker
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky)
October 28, 2016
Update 4: Murray (or someone claiming to be Murray?) has now tweeted that
the supposed hack was due to LinkedIn. What I find frustrating is all the contradicting information and the renewed silence of Hello Games.
I have reached out to the developer via email and on Twitter asking for clarification. I have questions. For instance, is Murray now claiming that the email sent to myself and other journalists claiming this was all a disgruntled employee’s doing part of this apparent hack? Or is this merely damage control?
The fact is, with everything going on today and all the contradicting messages, we don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. We don’t even know that this is Sean Murray tweeting. I’ve asked Hello Games to speak on the phone, but can’t find a phone number to contact them myself.
Whatever the case, take everything here with a grain of salt. I would argue that, given the randomness and contradictory nature of these emails and tweets, that you should take everything pre and post “hack” with appropriate skepticism. Something isn’t right here, and until we get actual answers we have only speculation.
Update 5: This was just tweeted by Sean Murray to Hello Games:
.@hellogames are you still hacked and stuff?
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) October 28, 2016
I am confused. I do not understand what purpose this serves. Something seems deeply amiss.
Update 6: Kotaku has
some interesting updates on this, including a lengthy email they received that appears to be fake. Then again, that email looks utterly different from the very short one I received. If this was all just a hack, why didn’t I receive the same lengthy email that Kotaku received? Why did I receive such a short response:
Update 7: Hello Games has “responded” to Sean Murray (scare quotes because Sean Murray is the Hello Games chief and this whole conversation is really strange.) They are claiming that all the emails were part of the hack, from the lengthy strange one sent to Kotaku, to the simple two-line response sent to me claiming this was a disgruntled employee. At this point I don’t know what to believe, but I can say this is a very peculiar way of handling this situation and sets off all kinds of alarm bells for me. I’m not sure if we will get to the bottom of this or not. I would like to see Murray make a video statement.
