Two questions have plagued Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky since the title’s rough-as-guts launch back in August: “Is that it?” and “Where did Sean Murray go?”. While the answer to the first query remains elusive, the second was somewhat satisfied recently by the studio’s audio chief Paul Weir.
As you’re probably aware, Murray’s Twitter account has been utterly silent since August 18, with the following tweet his last contribution:
We’re totally focused on customer support right now. Then we’ll move onto improving and adding features to the game ?
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 18, 2016
Obviously, the lack of communication by Murray caused consternation among the game’s fans (and detractors) and while messages appeared via other avenues — Steam and the game’s official blog for instance — nothing has really been proffered by Murray himself.
It’s hard to say how long the radio silence will continue, but those wondering if the beleaguered creator of No Man’s Sky had simply vanished well… no, he hasn’t:
@TingerDave Sean is fine and we’re all busy on the next patch.
— Paul Weir (@earcom) October 9, 2016
When Weir was asked for more details, he wasn’t prepared to elaborate:
@TimDebyser @TingerDave I’m afraid I have nothing useful to say. It’s entirely up to Hello or Sean as to when they want to talk publicly.
— Paul Weir (@earcom) October 9, 2016
I suppose at the very least, he’s still working on the game in some capacity. Whether or not it’s from a fortified bunker in the middle of Sony HQ and not the studio itself? Your guess is as good as mine.
Comments
52 responses to “No Man’s Sky’s Sean Murray Is ‘Fine’, Hello Games ‘Busy’ On Patches”
I don’t think anyone was legit worried about his safety or well-being, most buyers are justifiably shit-off about him going underground to avoid the heat for his overhyped PoS product.
I expect there were plenty of people concerned for his well-being. Not everyone is outraged, and at times I wondered if he could hit a depression for the incredible vitriol he endured.
Society seems have lost the ability to deal with things in a decent, courteous manner, and people effectively die because of it.
He could have done the inverse, and gone all Digital Homicide.
Your so sensitive and kind. Bless you. I hope the next time I bilk a shitload of people out of their money by effectively lying about a released product which in turn sends vitriol my way I stay in your thoughts…
Sure, the next time a bunch of angry emotionally-undeveloped internet tough guys are out for your blood for a game you release that had day 1 reviews but they bought it anyway and were surprised, I’ll keep you in my thoughts. Hell I’ll even take up religion and keep you in my prayers, too.
Thats all I ask
Guy spends years lying about product so people will buy it, continues to lie about it even after release (“So many people, no wonder multiplayer isn’t working, fixing it now!” “People having trouble with rotation of planets, scaling it back!”) then goes into hiding when people actually dig into the code and find how bullshit everything is…
Yeah sorry, I’ll never condone the crazy shit people on the internet say/do (death threats are never the answer) but at the same time, I have no sympathy for scam artists.
Honestly, it doesn’t make sense like that. Anyone who has been involved with a lot of software projects would probably guess it went more like this:
They had a large scope and a lot of optimism. They had a demo on prototype systems, and they wanted to deliver this great thing. The press and gamers ran with the idea and in fact tended to fill in gaps with speculation. So the whole buzz grew somewhat out of the control of Hello and Sony. Sean kept opening his big mouth and freestyling ideas. His team probably has to sift the wheat from the chaff here, but he has a direct channel to the press and is very popular, so those ideas went out as promises.
At some point they realised they were in trouble. Whatever methodology they use to manage the project, if they have burn down charts or whatever – they realised they were slipping badly. Multiplayer ideas were probably cut early, but they had never directly confirmed the assumptions of the press and gamers. Here they start hamming. The refusal to clearly state something is lying by omission, really. This is when the dishonesty starts, and the motivation is clear.
I’m guessing in the last months they realised they couldn’t keep delaying it and had to release. So the goal becomes “release”. Long hours, no sleep, and all the while a tired Sean is smiling and not letting on they are fucked. The clumsy post about rotation sounds like a panicked attempt to hide replacing the not working dream system with a shitty static placeholder system.
They get to release. They have a releasable version. They might even be avoiding penalties in contracts (say with Sony regarding the free promotion) by making the release date. With a shit eating grin, Sean holds up the CD on a twitter pic. He and the team know they failed to deliver on the promises. And they know that probably their entire livelihoods are tied up in this thing. And they fucked it up in a number of ways.
So here is Sean and team, hiding their fuckup until the last minute. The whole thing is they were probably somewhat ashamed, disappointed and scared. The motivation here was kind of like a scared employee hiding their mistake, not a moustache twirling villain planning years ahead to fail to deliver a whole bunch of features.
I find this to be the best analysis I’ve come across yet of what likely happened. Internet hoard assumes the worst (he’s evil, he’s manipulative, he just loves to F people over) and stubbornly sticks to their guns. Hell, for all they care, due to their precious $60 being “wasted” he could commit suicide and they would grin and feel satisfaction as they read the news. The internet rage machine, man. Modern Salem Witch Trials.
That said, there should be repercussions for how the entire marketing was handled. The marketing was misleading. Sean Murray should not be the talking head of HG. I just can’t get behind the whole “they’re laughing all the way to the bank and they’re super evil” sentiment.
It’s possible that Sean Murray has been AWOL because of a strategic marketing decision. Maybe he’s no longer allowed to be the ‘talking head’ as he can’t be trusted to answer the deluge of public reaction, without making matters worse.
>Maybe he’s no longer allowed to be the ‘talking head’ as he can’t be trusted to answer the deluge of public reaction
Exactly. Notice that radio silence started just after Sean started talking about free updates. He finally got muzzled.
Well Hello Games is being investigated by the UK’s consumer protection body, or so I hear.
Not for refunds, but an actual investigation in to the marketing of NMS as a whole.
It’s hard to judge why they did it.
I doubt they are super villains, but it takes a certain type of person to knowingly mislead, for what ever reason.
And he didn’t go in to hiding because of the backlash, he went radio silent well before players started realising.
at no point did the developers address the hype and manage expectations when they knew they were falling short, instead kept promoting the game and its many out of scope features. any software developer worth their salt lives by the phrase “manage expectations”
Heavens, I never considered that Sean might be going through something right now, oh that poor man, I never thought how he was feeling 😮
Why didn’t I think of it before, he vanished from the public sphere he previously craved, because of the unbridled toxicity of his game.
Here I thought the hiding was a product of knowingly misleading folks, as was the anger.
Curse this unfair world!!! Can’t a man just lie through his teeth to people to make a buck?!?!
We should create a salve or cream, one that protects the delicate skin of those who can’t handle taking responsibility for their actions.
Then we should all send Sean a card wishing him luck with that pesky consumer affairs investigation.
If you believed any of the hype in 2016 you deserved to got got.
And yeah, if you expect the devs to consider your feelings, show a little empathy in kind…
Oh I agree, I’m sick of people expecting companies to follow the laws they are bound to.
I’m with you, if you bought the hype, even a little, then it is purely your fault that Sean misled you.
(I mean, they were pretty much asking for it lol)
Yes yes yes, if people want some feedback from Hello Games about the mess, then they have to be friendly and patient, it only works one way!!
(And over two months silence after release is perfectly normal and shouldn’t raise alarm bells at all.
Legally binding? Are you claiming that, in 2016, it’s reasonable to expect advertising to accurately communicate the features of a product or service?
In 1916, you might have had a point. In 2016, it’s well established that burgers have almost zero resemblance to the images used to advertise them. In fact, I think LH has an article series dedicated to this comparison.
At the end of the day, it’s simple. Don’t be stupid and pre order games. Wait a month to hear if it’s any good, and if it is, buy it for half the launch day price…
It’s not rocket science!
I would never make such an outrageous and accurate claim detailing consumer protections and rights under the law.
It’s so outdated and archaic and has no place in the modern world.
I mean, I did make use of those laws to get a refund for NMS, almost 20 days over the retailers return period, but it’s not 1916, so I assume there must have been a technical glitch.
I should probably hand myself in to police….
…It’s 2016 after all!!
THe only logical reason he was not public is maybe because he is busy fixing it?
When I submit a p.o.s essay to be graded to my university, I know it’s a p.o.s because I’ve written and read plenty of good and bad essays, and because I pay a lot just to go there. If this guy doesn’t know he’s releasing garbage, he has no business producing and advertising his product. It shouldn’t be difficult to take responsibility for making and selling garbage (I’m just a student, and even I can do that), but he hasn’t taken responsibility for it, and it’s still being misadvertized on steam, playstation store, and generally all over the place (except by most people who have actually played it). Society isn’t courteous anymore because courtesy is a concept from Arthurian mythology – and the societies that that mythology influenced – when crusading was the norm. Monty Python destroyed that concept as far as I know, just like No Man’s Sky destroyed any faith I didn’t even know I had in advertising standards.
the rest of the mature buyers (the ones who got what they paid for) cant blame him for remaining silent because nothing short of a hammer horror film public lynching would satisfy the taste for blood that the gamers you have mentioned have.
I want them to start talking again to hear how the game is going forward, people like the gamers you mention make that further unlikely any time soon.
Did you hear, those blood thirsty savages even got a reddit thread taken down?!
Sean’s prob locked in the offices, surrounded by the salivating zombie like “gamers” crying for his flesh.
Or just laying low after ripping a bunch of folks off.
So hard to tell with all the conflated emotions and strawmanning
yeah who would have thought someone getting real death threats just because a place they worked at collectively decided they had to delay during their stuff, would be decide to lay low when something (more so of his making) happened. If the crowd wanted blood then, just imagine how much they wanted now.
It must look like a scene out of a zombie film over there.
Well, instead of blood thirsty hordes there’s just everyday street traffic.
And the furniture wouldn’t be barricading the entrances, it would be arranged for work use.
Um, food wouldn’t be an issue, the vending machine would be regularly replenished, it’s the UK so plenty of fast food joints nearby.
Rather than being trapped, they would be free to leave, go home, shop, do personal stuff.
The feeling would be suffocating, knowing that xXlolCoDMasterGamingXx might have caught a bus to the airport and flown to the UK to carry out his emailed threat.
The message, all in caps, would haunt my dreams…
The horror.
I don’t wish him ill, nor am I exaggerating the impact that it has on my own life. I just think that he would benefit from being more transparent in future – especially seeing as how he was quite talkative before his product was released. A simple public address shortly after the release would have been suitable. As Sony said, he didn’t really have someone to work on his PR, and that sucks. But at the end of the day he’s an adult, and could have handled this far better. Is it really so difficult to communicate in our digital world?
I agree he could have handled it better, as to is it so difficult to communicate in our digital world, I think, yeah, it really is. After the shitstorm blew up, I have no idea what I would have said in that situation, when you see how toxic people get and how crazy feeding the fire can get, I can see why you might decide that going silent until you can get some advice, maybe hire a PR person, and even perhaps wait until you have some software update that might appease some of the people ready to go before saying anything.
I was worried about his well-being.
A++ on your humanity there. Let’s put you under a lot of pressure and backlash from the community and see if you come out okay. He’s probably had to deal with a lot of emotional trauma since launch.
I for one, hope he is definitely doing okay. I look forward to seeing what No Man’s Sky CAN become.
Humanity?
Why conflate and twist the issue, purposefully omitting the central point and problem while focusing on the symptom as a cause.
There has been nothing on Sean’s health, only the image of a depressed man driven to madness, generated by strange people.
Would I come out ok if I was in the situation?
The answer is simple, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
Honestly if I made a game I’d probably stay away from social media for a few weeks after the release for my own sanity
Me too. Anything he said online after launch would have been chewed up and spat back with horrific levels of vitriol, and would have been totally pointless, other than people wanting him to be severely punished for releasing a game they didn’t like, or didn’t meet their expectations.
So much of what people took as ‘promises’ were on the spot comments during interviews during the development phase, or were pretty open to interpretation, and people chose to read it the way they wanted to. There was no compulsion to buy the game on day1, as the universe was so big that spoilers or other people already discovering anything was a problem.
It was an indy developer, with a small team, trying a multi-platform release, nearly everything shown in the videos, with a few exceptions was pretty close to the final product, I still can’t understand that people thought the game was this massive monster of a thing, when a bit of commonsense looking at the team size and the videos shown would have set expectations pretty close to what was delivered. Sure, some things mentioned are just plain missing. You can’t troll other players, and it looks like you can’t see other players, but that was never going to be a thing with the universe this big, so far, what, one pair of people entered the same space at the same time?
I’m still playing the game, I’ve sunk hundreds of hours in, I like it a lot more than Elite Dangerous, and I’m glad they are working on the game, hopefully to add some more stuff.
Just the ability to fly low over the surface of ever different planets, chase weird wildlife, explore caverns, use the grenades to make my own shelters in the landscape when I need to ride out a storm, attack the mining ships and try and survive the sentinel ships onslaught, name everything I find, build up enough money to buy a ship that has more reach, shielding, firepower, explore the lore of the three species of intelligent alien creatures, fight sentinels, and the big bastard military sentinels on legs, craft items, be attacked by a variety of creepy arse creatured, land and jump out of your ship and explore on foot, dive underwater, spot a planet in the sky and be able to fly to the damn thing!
All stuff I have wanted in games forever, and that no one else has delivered.
I get it, people feel lied to and disappointed about the game, but the shitstorm around it (Wah, wha he lied and stole everyone’s money) is a gross over-reaction, and it is not a wonder they have their heads down, working on making the game better, rather than pointlessly engaging with a toxic community online.
“when a bit of commonsense looking at the team size and the videos shown would have set expectations pretty close to what was delivered.”
OMG so much this…
It’s breathtaking what some people extrapolated about the game from nothing. Had a bunch of friends who were ludicrously excited for it and every time I said “I don’t think that’s the game they’re making… have you watched the videos?” They blocked it out and had convinced themselves it was something it never was. Those same people now take pleasure in every bad thing that is said about it, it’s a strange, strange cycle that gets played out with nearly every release now.
I’ll agree that the core of this is that people looked into the idea and saw their own game, it happens all the time, but if you sit down and read some of the stuff documenting the claims vs the game you’ll see that there is a serious difference between the game they were advertising and the game that hit the shelves. I’ve seen shorter missing feature lists on Peter Molyneux games.
BAHAHAHHAHA awww…. bless ol’ Pete and his delightfully ludicrous claims.
I totally get where you’re coming from but I guess because i’m an old fart and have lived through so very very many “THIS GAME IS THE SECOND COMING” cycles (about every five years) I’m just used to parsing the nonsense from what the end product is actually going to end up being. Which is pretty much what happened here but magnified x1000 by the current state of internet communication.
Hopefully people will learn to temper their expectations a bit and read between the lines of the marketing spiel, in this case unfortunately a lot of the marketing was faced by a guy who had no background in it and didn’t understand that everything he said would be taken as a gospel promise which if not delivered would result in the unrelenting fiery hellstorm of internet awfulness.
We as gamers are now so used to only hearing from PR people with rehearsed scripts that we’ve been trained to take everything we hear on face value which is a bit of a shame, it means that in the depths of development you can’t talk about things you’d like to put in your game because if they don’t work out the audience will rip you to shreds no matter what you say. Remember this guy is a programmer and game dev, he’s not a PR person that has been trained to manipulate the expectations of their audience, watch all his interviews through that lens and it’s pretty easy to see where the shenanigans came from.
This. So much this. Just from this thread alone you can see the drama people want to dump on Murray and HelloGames, so you can only imagine what its like in the bigger world.
I expect most dont remember the heady days of the 90’s and 00’s when pretty much any game with an ounce of hype would have something missing at release, never to be patched in.
Thanks to the capabilities of internet communication, we now live in a world of zero tolerance. If ANYTHING falls short of expectations, its the Worst Thing Ever ™, and this is a perfect example of it.
Take multiplayer. It amazes me how aggressive and angry people were about something they were never going to experience, even if it was there. Seriously, it was so clear beforehand that you should have zero expectations on the topic that its pointless even considering it to be an option, yet that was the first thing I saw being thrown back at them.
Can you imagine the drama something like Daikatana would have if it was released today?
Multiplayer being there even if wasn’t likely is still a big deal. A big part of the pitch for No Man’s Sky was possibility and exploration. A huge part of the pitch was that you probably wouldn’t see half of it. It wasn’t about racing to meet up with someone it was about the idea that you could be playing and experience this incredibly unlikely interaction. If it’s not in the game that’s fine, it’s only a little feature, but they led people on about it.
The negative reaction isn’t about specifics being pointed to it’s about the million little things that weren’t there. It sounds pedantic but the game was presented as having all these little things that would make the No Man’s Sky universe feel like it was alive. When someone complains that there aren’t rare giant creatures it’s not necessarily about wanting rare giant creatures it’s about the game being so much smaller than it was presented as being. It’s about being led to believe there were a billion creatures only to discover that there were a billion variations on the same few creatures you encounter right away.
It’s also hard to call someone out for being upset over the multiplayer when the developers knew it wasn’t there and danced around it. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on most of the missing features but their handling of the multiplayer question was flat out dishonest. If I asked you point blank if your game had direct player on player interactions would you feel right dodging the question in a way that suggested it does even if you knew it didn’t?
My counter-argument to “multiplayer isnt there” is that it IS there. Just not how people expected it.
First week, I had systems discovered by others popping up. About when I hit my first Atlas station. Its not at the MMO grouping end of the multiplayer spectrum, but having two others discover systems and planets before me IS a form of mutliplayer.
To me, that says clearly that whingers dont want to look at the game objectively, but subjectively. They wanted MMO type grouping, or something relatable to that, and when it didnt happen, they scream murder. Then go looking for other things that are largely there, just not as they imagined.
The worst thing that isnt there are the giant creatures, and no water flow. Everything else, I’ve come across something reasonably close to while playing. Close enough that I’m not going to get my hangin’ rope because its not exactly like my imagination.
I’ve come out of caves into teeming wildlife of a half dozen species, and variations. I’ve warped into systems with huge space battles happening. I’ve had those dogfights.
Its not the exactly the same as what was in the videos from a year or so back, but guess what? Those videos are designed to sell the frikin game, and hence present a best case scenario. They sure as hell arent going to show any weaknesses.
When was the last time people saw that in a promo? Seriously, people are screaming murder here for some sort of false advertising, but when was the last time you saw a negative promo from a developer?
Its more a reflection on our instant gratification society than anything. If its not perfect, its abyssmal junk.
I’m not saying the game was perfect. It IS missing things. But it sure as hell isnt the first time, so why suddenly such an incredible level of hate?
So yes, it is easy to call someone out on the multiplayer thing. Its there, people just dont want to see it. Suck it up, realise the game wasnt what your imagination wanted it to be, and move on. Learn the frikin lesson that reviews serve a purpose and understand that preordering risks disappointment.
I’m sick of people throwing death threats at someone like this when all they are trying to do is entertain you. Its not right, and no amount of justification will ever make it right. If you cant see that, you’re part of the problem.
If we were talking exclusively about early claims that’d be one thing, but it’s a steady trend throughout the games development. Even if all his statements were misinterpreted wishlist features he was doing it for so long that he had to have caught on to how his statements were being received. Like you said it was very obvious that this was going to happen.
He’s an amateur developer so I’d normally cut him a lot of slack, but that excuse doesn’t really work when he’s selling his product at this level. I mean if I wanted to step up to the Steam or PSN stage I have to rise to the challenge or face the consequences. Hello Games went beyond that and up to the AAA stage. There are responsibilities that come with that.
I’m not saying the people treating this like a blood feud are right to do so, I’m always against internet campaigns aimed at individuals, but that’s the arena he chose to enter and nobody did anything to calm people down and avoid this very predictable outcome. He may not deserve to be strung up but it’s important that he doesn’t get a free pass either.
For the record I have no grudge against him and I never got on board the hype train for No Man’s Sky. I made a conscious effort not to be too critical of it before launch because I didn’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, but anyone who knows anything about procedural content generation understands that the method results in very hollow content. Anyone who knows the style of game knows it’s not for everyone.
Honestly the way seasoned gaming websites embraced it without question and got just as hyped as everyone else is a disturbing statement on the state of video game coverage. I don’t usually demand unbiased coverage but I think they owe it to their audience to keep a level enough head to recognise this sort of stuff.
You make some really great points here, particularly about procedural generation and most importantly about the way games are covered in this modern age.
It’s an interesting cycle of press release -> breathless preview regurgitation of said press release -> rabid fan base latching on to any piece of news or speculation -> reporting of rabid fanbse -> backlash to anyone who dares speak ill of definitely perfect game -> more breathless previews and let’s plays -> release and explosion of vitriol and think pieces about said non perfect game and “what went wrong?”
I think I actually remember seeing a few pre-release articles (maybe even here…? not sure) about NMS basically saying “Hey everyone… temper your expectations a bit, this is likely to not be the game you think it is” which I thought was interesting.
Overall i’m relatively wary of anything that reads like a press release these days but unfortunately that’s often all the press has to go on whilst still getting the clicks needed to keep the site actually running. It’s a tough one, I think some of the best stuff on here are the opinion pieces and the longer form journalism, polygon have done some great long form stuff recently as well (check out the EA one if you’ve not).
I dunno, they were bragging about some pretty intense algorithms that were being created behind the scenes, and there are some pretty powerful algorithms out there. I would not have been shocked if a small studio had come out with the game everyone thought they were making. I didn’t buy the game initially though because I was skeptical from the get-go.
Same…
Although I assume both if us didn’t attempt to sell people snake oil and had proper PR staff and plans etc
I mean, you could do it the Sean Murray way, if you really wanted to go the, crap on that hornets nest angle.
Ha ha this is so funny, watching everyone rant and cry. Thanks for the money suckers!
Wait, wouldn’t the reverse Murray guy be good though?
His silence speaks volumes.
No It doesn’t
Hmm, very wise..very wise.
@shadow made a good point, but your rebuttal was stirring.
I find myself torn, I abstain from judgement while I ponder both sides.
On one hand his silence is very damning….while on the other hand nah-uh…
Truely a riddle
Well, he’s got me there
That’s honestly been the biggest question I’ve had through all of this… Is the team at Hello Games, and Sean Murray in particular, OK? It’s tough enough to have to try and deal with one aggressive fuck at a time, whether it’s real life or internet related… Having essentially an entire industry on your back? Fuck.
Yeah, I’m happy to hear they are working, and that they are okay. Regardless of what you think of the team or the guy or whatever, it is a pretty brutal storm, and not what any developer would have wanted.
He needs a PR team. Any silence is making it worse. Reddit is vile trash but I don’t like Murray just as much.
My issue’s with the headline, really. Framing it that way, I’d imagine Sound Bloke wishes he didn’t say that much after all.
Thanks for the ‘update’ 😉
I went halves with a friend on buying the game and we share it across out two ps4s. We both knew about features missing but bought it anyway because of the concept and exploration.
I think in about a week or two we both just stopped playing because we’d felt like we had seen everything it had to offer. We could have kept buying new ships and learning new words and upgrading our suit… but why?
I think what annoyed me the most though was the lack of communication from the developers. Anyone that’s half decent at customer service knows that if you or someone else fucks up and can’t deliver what the customer wants and was told that they’ll get, then you need to make that clear so that they have the opportunity to change their mind or consciously continue with the purchase even without those missing features.
It was so, so unprofessional to just go dark and say “we’re working on stuff,” but what stuff? When will we get what was promised?
Basically what I’m trying to say is that if they had said right off the bat, “hey so we couldn’t fit everything in the game that we wanted to, but we’ll fix it soon and let you know what’s going on because we’re professionals,” then I would have been defending them since release.
so much hate on the internet. i would not liked to have been in Sean’s shoes.
the mental strain and emotional stress he would have been under for most of the development, coupled with the shit shower of haters after launch, is enough to make anyone consider suicide.
i dont believe hes a villain, i AM concerned about his mental health, i DO also believe things could have been handled better from Hello Games end of things.
the thing that disgust me the most as some people above have mentioned, is the toxicity of the gaming community. its fucking scary and more than once, has caused people, right of wrong, to be suicidal or cause harm to themselves or others after a mental snap. that is truly saddening.
This is my most hyped game of 2016, anyone know when it’ll be finished?
Why is everyone so upset, I picked up my pre-order played 65 mins and then returned it for a refund which I put onto my PS VR (which I still haven’t bothered picking up, got till the 19th to make a decision) if the game sucked (which it did) then why keep playing.
The solution is oh, so simple.
Do not pre-order games.
If everybody had have waited a few days after release, the reviews would have been out and everyone would have known that the game was lacking in the features that were spoken about pre-release.
Plenty of guys will get a review copy and post their impressions. We all have our favorites. For me, if Angry Joe says it’s worth it, I buy it. Drop your money on a “promise” and you deserve what you get.
Make informed decisions. It’s not hard. The information is out there. You know it. Use it. Stop complaining.
You cannot decide from one day to another to be silent like that. Sean talked great about his game and hyped up people with it and now he decides to remain silent.
Why?
Reason #1: He cannot assume the fact that his crew is working on the game improvements and updates. He prefers to stay vague so he wont disappoint again (even if that means no improvement or update at all).
Reason #2: He got hurried up by Sony to make the game gold and now he’s afraid to face the community from which he understands the matters.
Anyway, in my personal opinion? This game is DEAD.