As NetEase pledges to 'replace' a No Man's Sky model in its survival MMO, Sean Murray says they played themselves because the asset's busted anyway

Next time a commenter points out a typo in one of my articles, I'll just say it's to make potential plagiarists look stupid. After No Man's Sky players on Reddit (via GamesRadar) questioned the provenance of an asset in survival MMO Once Human—suggesting it bore a marked resemblance to a similar object in No Man's Sky—Hello Games' boss Sean Murray seemed remarkably at-ease about the possibility he'd been the target of an asset heist.

"Joke's on them," he wrote, because the original No Man's Sky asset is all jacked up anyway.

The asset in question is NMS' base teleport module, a big, lens-looking thing that players can use to quickly jaunt between areas. It's essentially a big circle studded with rivets and bars, and looks very similar to, ah, Once Human's big circle studded with rivets and bars, which you can pick up if you happen to roll lucky on one of its shinier lootboxes. Once Human's is white and seems to contain someone's discarded Peloton bike, but that aside? The resemblance is striking.

It wasn't long before NMS players accused Once Human of dodgy behaviour, noting that it has, in the past, been dinged for using assets that look to have been copy and pasted from Rainbow Six Siege for a battle pass reward, which was eventually quietly removed.

Has it pulled the same trick twice? It certainly seems that way. I reached out to NetEase for a statement, and was told, "We take this very seriously and want everyone to feel confident in the creative work that goes into the game. We are committed to ensuring that our work remains original and respectful of the broader creative community. Honouring original creativity is fundamental to who we are and how we operate.

"With this in mind, we will replace the asset in question. We are undertaking a thorough review and will be using this moment to strengthen our internal art and design policies. We genuinely appreciate the community members who brought this to our attention. This feedback helps us to improve."

For his part, Sean Murray doesn't sound too bothered. As I mentioned before, the NMS model in question is a little less than perfect. Specifically, Murray notes that Hello "forgot to LOD those rivets" that stud the teleporter's rim.

Murray accompanied his post with detailed pictures of the rivets in question, revealing a set of studs composed of a frankly terrifying, computer-sweating number of polygons. No, really, where most of the base teleporter module is composed of simple, large surfaces, the rivets look to be made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of polygons.

So if you're playing Once Human and your new lootbox tchotchke brings the game to a screeching halt then, well, case closed.

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