Why ‘No Man’s Sky’ Devs Did Not Accept Innovation Award At GDC Awards Show

Well, that’s kind of odd. “No Man’s Sky” developer Hello Games bagged the Innovation Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco, but nobody from the team made it to the stage to claim it. Their non-appearance forced show host Tim Schafer to just accept the recognition on their behalf.

Apparently, “No Man’s Sky” is still considered as one of the most innovative games despite the backlash it received since its release in August of last year. The harsh criticism over the alleged misrepresentation of what the action-adventure title would look like was to strong that the game had negative publicity for months. Perhaps it was due to this negativity that the developers behind the game did not expect to win any award at the GDC Awards.

According to Polygon, when Hello Games was recognized as the winner of the Innovation Award at the event, the members of the team were not around to claim it simply because they were eating dinner at the time. The developers were basically munching on food somewhere else while thinking that winning the award would not be part of their trip to San Francisco.

Shortly after the announcement that they won, Hello Games code lead Innes McKendrick took to Twitter to clarify what happened. “We were uh, eating dinner talking about how we definitely wouldn’t win an award,” McKendrick wrote. In a follow-up, he revealed that they did return to the show, but they were obviously too late to claim the award onstage.

As for Sean Murray, he also shared their side of the story on Twitter. He maintained that they weren’t expecting the award because winners always get notified beforehand. However, since the organizers did not relay this to them ahead of time, they thought they didn’t win the award.

Meanwhile, Murray will be giving a talk on the last day of the Game Developers Conference this Friday. His conference, entitled “Building Worlds Using Math(s),” will focus on the technologies and challenges “behind generating both realistic and alien terrains without artistic input, using mathematics,” as per Express.

Active gamers of “No Man’s Sky” should also watch out for Murray’s lecture because he will be imparting an important lesson on generating, populating and rendering a “unique looking planet.”