No Man's Sky Players Are Trying to Figure Out Sean Murray's Mysterious Bacon Tease for the New Update

Summary

Bacon emojis from No Man’s Sky lead developer Sean Murray are sparking fan theories about potential game expansions.
The game continues to receive regular free updates, with the latest focusing on archaeological digs.
Theories vary from new alien races to cooking expansions, generating excitement and speculation among fans.

No Man’s Sky lead developer Sean Murray has blown the collective minds of fans of the outer space exploration survival game with nothing more than emojis featuring strips of bacon. The founder of Hello Games is increasing No Man’s Sky‘s social media reach, but his unusual method of communication is sparking fan theories about what may be coming to the game.

Regular free updates have kept No Man’s Sky feeling fresh, even as the game approaches the nine-year anniversary of its initial launch date. More than 35 such updates have been released so far, with the latest, No Man’s Sky‘s Relics update, released in late March and featuring a focus on archaeological digs.

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Murray joined social media platform Bluesky on May 31, cleverly choosing the username nomansbsky.bsky.social, which reads as “No Man’s Bluesky.” His first five posts on the app were all images from the game without descriptions, simply using artwork of No Man’s Sky’s ships, planets, and alien creatures to tell their own stories. But by far, his two posts with the greatest amount of interaction from the community have been ones that featured bacon emojis with no context. These posts are stirring up some wild fan theories, as many players believe they may be leaving hints about a future game expansion.

Bacon Emojis Spawn Wild No Man’s Sky Theories

Theories about the bacon posts span a broad range of topics. Some believe Murray is teasing a new alien race in No Man’s Sky, which could join the Gek, Korvax, Vy’keen, and others. Plenty more are equating the word “bacon” with “beacon,” thinking that a new point of interest may be appearing in the game soon. Others are taking a more literal interpretation, anticipating the expansion of the game’s cooking or agricultural mechanics. While No Man’s Sky isn’t known for its crossover content, some have even been making jokes about The Muppet Show‘s Pigs in Space segments and using the bacon/beacon pun to allude to lighting the beacons of Lord of the Ring‘s Kingdom of Gondor.

Since the account belongs to Murray and was not officially set up for the game itself, these two posts also have the potential to hold no connection to No Man’s Sky whatsoever. A few fans have also postulated that Murray could be dropping hints about Hello Games’ upcoming open-world sci-fi game Light No Fire, which was announced at The Game Awards 2023 and focuses on one massive, explorable world instead of an entire galaxy. Little more has been revealed since the game’s announcement, but a few fans think the emoji might allude to the game “coming out of the oven” soon or promoting an upcoming “sizzle reel.”