Last week, Pocketpair head of publishing and communications John “Bucky” Buckley addressed a bubbling conversation about the developer’s Palworld collaboration strategy, informing players that they “simply do not realize the sheer number of collabs we’ve rejected or scrapped” over a perceived mismatch.
That exchange with the Palworld fanbase seems to have gotten the attention of No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games, intensifying a flirtatious game of crossover footsie that’s been ongoing between the two studios’ public figureheads for months.
Bro @Bucky_cm bro @Bucky_cm brooooooooooo ❤️ https://t.co/KvOiHqCNQTAugust 18, 2026
After noticing the discourse, Hello Games founder Sean Murray quoted a post discussing the issue to tag the Pocketpair comms head with an emphatic “Bro @Bucky_cm bro @Bucky_cm brooooooooooo ❤️.”
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It’s the most Murray has acknowledged a will-they-won’t-they romance arc that’s gone on for over a year. While the two had previously been friendly on the platform, Buckley has repeatedly indicated Pocketpair’s interest in a No Man’s Sky collaboration on X after Murray professed adoration for the announcement of Palworld’s Terraria crossover content in June 2025. In response to Murray’s heart-eyes emoji, Buckley posted an all-caps “SEAN!”—which I think we can all agree was, at the very least, emotionally charged.
The tension simmered until April 2026, when the flirtation became more explicit. After Murray offered cryptic hints that No Man’s Sky’s was joining Palworld in the ranks of Pokémon-likes with its then-upcoming creature battling update, Buckley replied to urge the Hello Games head to “email me, my man,” as “it seems there could be a FUN COLLAB IDEA.”
As far as the X-going public can tell, that overture went unacknowledged. When Murray posted the full reveal for No Man’s Sky’s Xeno Arena update later that morning, Buckley put on a brave face. By which I mean he deployed another all-caps “S E A N” and posted a picture of that one silly prehistoric fish that looks so surprised.
While Hello Games would continue to celebrate Palworld’s 1.0 release date announcement in June and its successful launch in July, Pocketpair’s collab advances would remain unrequited—until the “bro’s” Murray deployed earlier this week.
Since then, things have—impossibly—gotten cornier.
Replying to that long-awaited acknowledgment, Buckley quoted lyrics from Eminem’s Stan, a song about an adoring fan who becomes progressively more unhinged, to say, “Dear @NoMansSky, I wrote you, but you still ain’t callin’… I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom… I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not’ve got ’em.”
Murray continued in kind, quoting the song’s closing lyrics: “Come to think about it, his name was… it was you,” he posted. “Damn…”
Even if it’s easy to imagine a fitting collaboration between the two games—a few Palworld-themed cosmetics or decorations in No Man’s Sky, some No Man’s Sky creatures in a collab-themed Palworld dungeon—I think I speak for all of us when I say: Get a room. Just let us know when you finally pull the trigger.