When No Man’s Sky was released two years ago, many gamers were left wondering where several “promised” elements, namely the option for Multiplayer, were. And anyone still playing (anyone? Anyone?) is probably still wondering that. The biggest missing piece was multiplayer, as the trailers and marketing around the game implied it would be a natural part of the story.

The founder of Hello Games, Sean Murray, took quite a bit of heat/hate for the incredibly disappointing gameplay, limited interactions, inventory issues, lackluster visuals, glitches, and plotholes — basically, the game failed miserably to live up to the hype surrounding its release.

So for anyone still interested in playing what had originally been touted as an infinite and unique visual marvel, many of the game’s issues are being resolved. Multiplayer mode will be included in the No Man’s Sky NEXT update — yes, UPDATE, not DLC. If you already own the original game, this will be a free update. If you haven’t yet purchased the game, NEXT will be a part of the full retail game, including all previous patches and updates. It will be out on the Windows PC, PlayStation4, and debuting on the Xbox One.

“We called our upcoming update “NEXT”, because it’s an important next step on a longer journey for us and the community. It will be our biggest update so far, and something we’ve been working ridiculously hard on. This will be free to existing players, and we’ll continue to support No Man’s Sky in this way for the foreseeable future,” says Sean Murray on the official No Man’s Sky website.

No Man’s Sky NEXT will allow players to team up and explore together, or prey on others in the universe. The long-awaited update will also feature racing and more complex shelter and base building, all of which will be visible to the larger online community. This promises to make for some clever defensive strategies and wicked pirating schemes. So far it seems that this will be online co-op multiplayer, not local co-op.

NEXT is scheduled to be released to the US market on July 24 of this year, and in Europe, on July 29th. Will you be going back?

The post What You Need to Know About No Man’s Sky’s NEXT July Update appeared first on OnPause.