No Man’s Sky, the PlayStation 4 exclusive that is poised to occupy my life for the foreseeable future, is facing another possible delay before its August 9 release. This delay, however, may be permanent.
A Dutch company named Genicap is alleging that Hello Games, the developers of No Man’s Sky, used their Superformula without licensing it. The Superformula is basically a math equation that allows the rendering of perfect circles – and if you didn’t think that was that difficult on a PC, neither did I.
Hello Games founder and creator Sean Murray has admitted to using the Superformula as the base for No Man’s Sky. “One of the hardest things for us to do is to create coherent shapes. This sounds ridiculous, but it is hard to find a formula that you can rely on”, Murray told the New Yorker, adding “the Superformula appeared reliable,” adding further evidence that Murray used the code for his game.
For the record, Genicap is not happy about laying into Hello Games, but it feels it has to protect its intellectual property.
“We haven’t provided a license to Hello Games,” said Genicap’s Jeroen Sparrow. “We don’t want to stop the launch, but if the formula is used we’ll need to have a talk.”
Sparrow said that they have tried to contact Hello Games but has not been successful. “We are in the process of creating a game based on the Superformula. It would be great if we could trade knowledge with Hello Games. We tried to contact them but didn’t get any response.”
This is potentially the third delay for No Man’s Sky. The first delay was due to Hello Games feeling they needed more time with the game. That delay sparked a few death threats – because that ALWAYS resolves issues with delays! The second delay occurred when Sky News sued Hello Games over the use of the word Sky – because, of COURSE you can own a common word like ‘sky’! This latest issue, however, threatens to shelve the game indefinitely. Here’s to hoping Hello Games can resolve this issue post-haste. I have personally been itching to take this game for a spin; hey, Planet Dick-cheese isn’t gonna name itself, and I am morally obligated to do so!
