'No Man's Sky' Twitter hacked, identity of culprit uncertain
UPDATE: Oct. 28, 2016, 12:11 p.m. EDT We have reason to believe the email received from the official Hello Games address may not have been legitimate. The article has been updated to reflect this.
Hello Games, the studio behind No Man's Sky tweeted "No Man's Sky was a mistake" Friday morning. The official Hello Games email account confirmed to Mashable that this was an unfortunate hack from an employee, and the statement was signed with the name "Sean Murray," the studio's founder. Mashable has used this email to communicate with Murray in the past, but at this time, it's unclear whether this email was actually sent by Murray or by someone who hacked into the Hello Games email.
"The tweet came from a disgruntled employee," the email read. "We're currently trying to solve the issue internally."
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Similar emails were received by Kotaku and Forbes, but a tweet from Hello Games and the contents of the emails Kotaku received raise the possibility that all of the emails sent from Hello Games on Friday have been illegitimate.
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The Friday morning tweet has since been deleted and the Hello Games Twitter account was made private for a few hours.
A few hours after the initial tweet was posted, the official Sean Murray and No Man's Sky Twitter account posted that there was a server hack.
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This was followed by another tweet stating that the actual mistake was using LinkedIn without two-factor authentication, which implies that Murray's LinkedIn account was hacked.
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Some screenshots of the deleted tweet say that it came from LinkedIn and it seems very likely that the person responsible for the tweet got into Murray's LinkedIn account (which is linked to the Hello Games Twitter).
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In May this year, LinkedIn confirmed that over 100 million account emails and passwords were stolen in a massive data breach, and a hacker said at the time that around 90 percent of the encrypted data had been cracked. LinkedIn suggested that users change their passwords, but did not force all users to do so.
Polygon reported that it reached out to Murray's personal email account and received a different response, in the person responding takes responsibility for the tweet.
"The tweet is from me, but somebody from the team took it down," Polygon said Murray wrote in the email. "We have not been coping well."
Mashable reached out to Hello Games through the official Hello Games email account, not Murray's personal account.
No Man's Sky has received a lot of criticism for how the final product failed to meet expectations and hype around the game before its launch. The game has mostly negative reviews on Steam, sharing complaints about the lack of actual diversity in its procedurally generated planets and creatures, lack of online features and lack of challenge. Hello Games was put under investigation for false advertisement in September.
After No Man Sky's release in August, both Murray and the studio have been mostly silent online. Murray's last tweet before the hack was posted Aug. 18 and Hello Games' last tweet was Sept. 23.
This story is developing and will be updated as more details emerge.
