No Man's Sky and Joe Danger Developer Hello Games Suffers Flood

[MarlaDesat]

No Man's Sky and Joe Danger Developer Hello Games Suffers Flood

Independent game studio Hello Games, whose trailer for procedurally generated exploration game No Man's Sky was one of the greatest hits of VGX, has suffered a flood.

The Hello Games office has suffered damage from a flood. No Man's Sky [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10535835/Christmas-travel-in-UK-disrupted-by-storms-and-flooding.html] has generated a lot of anticipation. There is no word yet on the impact that the flood will have on the studio's projects.

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/hellogames/status/415623767944331265]

Hello Games made the headlines earlier this month with the announcement trailer for No Man's Sky, which was revealed at VGX on December 7. The game is a major change from the Joe Danger series and will have a persistent, procedurally generated world spanning multiple planets. Sean Murray, Managing Director at Hello Games, described the new game at VGX, saying, "We wanted to make a game about exploration, and we wanted to make a game that was real. If you can see it, you can walk there, you can explore it. The planet on the horizon is a real place." The trailer shows players exploring underwater, on land, flying in the atmosphere and in space. The game will also feature combat between players. No release date has been announced for No Man's Sky.

We will update this story as details become available. Everyone here at The Escapist is sending their well wishes to the folks at Hello Games.

Source: Hello Games on Twitter [https://twitter.com/hellogames/status/415623767944331265]


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[josemlopes]

Please tell me that the only decent thing out of the VGX clusterfuck didnt just go to the shitter

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I hope they had offsite backups of their work in case the flooding trashed the data on the drives. This really sucks, even if I didn't enjoy the Joe Danger series, I know how hard it is to lose things you worked on due to inclement weather. I lost a 25k point Warhammer 40k fully painted and assembled Chaos army due to a hurricane dropping the roof of the storage shed in which they were kept on the boxes effectively destroying the pieces. If you've ever assembled a modest 40k army, you should understand that a 25k point army is huge and took a lot of work to paint, let alone all the modifications I did with a dremel and pinning (let alone the astronomical cost of all the pieces involved which had quite a few vehicles and a Khorne daemon prince for summoning purposes).
Best of luck to them.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Oh no. They're such a small studio. 4 very talented people. They don't deserve this shitty luck. Hopefully they can recover

 

[Tom_green_day]

And, y'know, lots of the rest of Britain. But no video games were harmed so that doesn't matter right guyz?
But No Man's Sky looked interesting. Let's hope they have a backup copy somewhere!

 

[Vivi22]

I hope they had offsite backups of their work in case the flooding trashed the data on the drives.

Indeed. No Man's Sky was looking pretty cool, so if they don't have backups then fuck me sideways...

Though really, when your entire business is based on data, keeping offsite backups should really be titled, "how we plan to stay in business if the office explodes." It's pretty much data retention 101. You'd have to either be kind of stupid or really not have a clue what you're doing to not have those backups. Especially when it can be as simple as setting up a small FTP server in someone's home or, at the very least, just taking external drives back and forth from home everyday and rotating them so yesterday's stuff is never in the office when you're working today.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I hope they had offsite backups of their work in case the flooding trashed the data on the drives.

Indeed. No Man's Sky was looking pretty cool, so if they don't have backups then fuck me sideways...

Though really, when your entire business is based on data, keeping offsite backups should really be titled, "how we plan to stay in business if the office explodes." It's pretty much data retention 101. You'd have to either be kind of stupid or really not have a clue what you're doing to not have those backups. Especially when it can be as simple as setting up a small FTP server in someone's home or, at the very least, just taking external drives back and forth from home everyday and rotating them so yesterday's stuff is never in the office when you're working today.

You would think so, but then you'd also be amazed at how many businesses don't do that at all or do it at such a low rate that any failure of the main database sets them back about 4 months. It might also scare you that some of these are banks that people I know have done IT and security work for, and have recommended multiple times they update their data backup plans to include daily backups only to be told "We're ok, we don't need that."
Of course I would say more but I wouldn't want to get my friends fired... But yes, it happens and on such a stupidly larger scale than it should people should ensure they have their own data backed up and keep fucking hardcopies of that shit in fireproof, waterproof safes.
Maybe people think I'm paranoid but erring on the side of caution and good recordkeeping should never be considered paranoid.

 

[Vivi22]

I hope they had offsite backups of their work in case the flooding trashed the data on the drives.

Indeed. No Man's Sky was looking pretty cool, so if they don't have backups then fuck me sideways...

Though really, when your entire business is based on data, keeping offsite backups should really be titled, "how we plan to stay in business if the office explodes." It's pretty much data retention 101. You'd have to either be kind of stupid or really not have a clue what you're doing to not have those backups. Especially when it can be as simple as setting up a small FTP server in someone's home or, at the very least, just taking external drives back and forth from home everyday and rotating them so yesterday's stuff is never in the office when you're working today.

You would think so, but then you'd also be amazed at how many businesses don't do that at all or do it at such a low rate that any failure of the main database sets them back about 4 months. It might also scare you that some of these are banks that people I know have done IT and security work for, and have recommended multiple times they update their data backup plans to include daily backups only to be told "We're ok, we don't need that."
Of course I would say more but I wouldn't want to get my friends fired... But yes, it happens and on such a stupidly larger scale than it should people should ensure they have their own data backed up and keep fucking hardcopies of that shit in fireproof, waterproof safes.
Maybe people think I'm paranoid but erring on the side of caution and good recordkeeping should never be considered paranoid.

Oh I know, believe me. Many companies don't do this right. My hope though is that a game developer, being a bit more tech savvy than your typical company owner/executive, might be more likely to do these things. It's just so simple and cheap to do, especially for smaller companies. There's really no excuse these days.

 

[Genocidicles]

And, y'know, lots of the rest of Britain. But no video games were harmed so that doesn't matter right guyz?

Well... the Escapist is primarily a videogame website...

If they're just going to report on any old disaster then I'm sure that there's something much worse going on they could bring up.

 

[Vault Citizen]

It's really bad luck in their part, the area of Surrey that they live in pretty much never floods. In all of the storms that have happened over the years it's usually another part of Surrey that floods.