'No Man's Sky' is finally getting full-fledged multiplayer

No Man's Sky will finally fulfill players' years-long dream of having a full multiplayer experience.

No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray revealed that the game's next big update, titled NEXT, will turn the space-exploration game into the multiplayer game that it always should have been. The free update will come to all platforms on the same day the game launches on Xbox One on July 24.

"You're going to be able to play with your friends — a full multiplayer experience," Murray said in an Inside Xbox live stream Thursday.

That means you can explore the No Man's Sky universe with your friends and happen upon random strangers in the gigantic open world. Players can build bases together, develop interplanetary colonies, race each other, and generally try to survive.

Like all good open world multiplayer games, you can also be a villain and try to destroy other players' hopes, dreams, and in-game livelihoods.

When No Man's Sky first released in August 2016, many early adopters were disappointed to find out that, while players were all exploring the same open world, they couldn't interact with each other whatsoever. Some people felt they were misled by developer Hello Games, which intended to include a full multiplayer experience from the start but found it to be too ambitious of a goal.

"This is something I wish we could've done sooner but I'm so glad it's happening," Murray said on Inside Xbox. "This is potential that everyone's always seen in No Man's Sky. It's the kind of game that myself and a lot of other people have always wanted to play in a multiplayer world."

According to a blog post from Murray, the team at Hello Games has tested the new multiplayer addition for six months.