Hi all,

Always loved NMS and last year, my two kids got really excited about it. So in the first half of 2020 my oldest kid bought and installed the GOG NMS game and we played several fun multiplayer sessions. A while later we also bought a GOG NMS copy on the account of my youngest kid. However at the first launch of the game, the game crashed.

Since then, whenever someone starts a multiplayer game, the game on the other 2 computers always crashes when starting multiplayer. When no one else is playing, a multiplayer game can be started without any problem.

I reported the issue several times in june and july 2020 to the suggested hellogames.zendesk.com url with the error token, but didn't get any answer except a "Thanks for reporting a bug, crash or issue!"

Meanwhile, after every NMS update we try again but always have the same situation: someone starts a multiplayer game, someone else tries to join and the game crashed with the second person. Always the same message "No Man's Sky Error - The game has encountered an error and will now shutdown" and then some error code 67249_0xC21893_GX53461397225026857.

We tried several things, like removing old savegames and starting anew. We removed all GOG NMS installed copies of the game on all computers throug GOG Galaxy (uninstall with remove savegames and settings) and reinstalled. But nothing helps and always the same problem, for the last year.

We are all on the same local LAN.

Is there anyone who has a similar experience? It's a real shame because the coöp play is really where the most fun is for the kids...

Haven't experienced this myself but here are a couple of things you might try.

Do you have a spare router kicking around somewhere? Try plugging it into the main router and connecting one of the PCs through it. That should put the machines on separate subnets and may prevent whatever collision is happening from occurring.

Similarly, perhaps use a VPN to put one of the PCs onto a remote network, where it's using a different IP entirely. That would also separate the machines in "net space" and might allow both to be online without crashing.

Hi dashiichi, thanks for the suggestion. Have been thinking in the same direction but didn't find a practical way to get the machines on a seperate lan.

Meanwhile we found a fix for the problem :-) . Last time we played MP was before the crossplay updates - there were no 'friend tokens' at that time - and I totally missed how profoundly the networking and multiplayer system has been reworked. (Which is *really* cool what Hello Games achieved with this game!)

It was quite an error-prone setup, but in the end the following scenario fixed it: everybody starts the game and enters the lobby. No one starts the game or the other players game will crash. Then we add eachothers friend tokens. This didn't work right away on all machines, but after restarting and adding the tokens again, we suddenly saw eachother in the lobby and could start and join the game.

We could also upgrade the savegames in the singleplayer and use them again in the multiplayer.

One time a player left the game and on returning he got the same error again as before. The two players still playing saved the game, left, entered the lobby again and could restart the MP game with three players.

So we're good to go. And we were amazed to see so much change and improvement in the game.

Ahhh... computers. isn't it wonderful how they make our lives so much simpler? ;-)

Well done on figuring out the solution!

Yeah this isn't a solution for when you try to join a random internet friend of yours that's already playing NMS. Main screen is fine, load game is fine, but join multiplayer from main menu immediately crashes with the same error OP got. The exact code differs sometimes, but always on clicking multiplayer, when the game tries to get a list of lobbies displayed, it just crashes.

You got 5 NMS friends, 3 of which are currently playing? Too bad, you won't be joining any of them now since it doesn't allow you to enter multiplayer mode anymore.

Really kills the motivation to even bother for me.

Same here.
Sometimes the MP opens normally and sometimes ctd in the moment I choose MP game mode.
Couldn't they fix it instead doing some trivial changes?

@Protog3n

Probably not going to help for three computers (and I know you have a solution of sorts already) ..

This may work for two computers - Does your router have a wifi Guest network?

If it does give the guest network a unique name (SSID), and a different password to the main wifi network.
Get one of your computers to join the main network, and the other on the guest network.
They now both have internet access .. but they are on two different LANs.
(Actually, I think if you connect one computer to the router with a LAN cable, this would also be a different LAN to the wifi networks, so you could potentially have three computers on different LANs, cable LAN, main Wifi LAN and Guest Network LAN .. Not sure but I think thats right, internally the router treats them all as separate LANs).

I use the guest network for any potential IOT (Internet Of Things = Amazon Alexa/TV/Lightbulbs etcetera) devices, being inherantly insecure and not likely to have their firmware updated I dont want them on the same LAN as more important machines in terms of security, so I let them do their thing and possibly get compromised on the Guest network so as they cant be used by hackers as a bridge to attack more important machines used for private stuff and emails.

But it may help your setup by having game machines on different LANs.

Explore your routers advanced capabilities, it may be restricted if you just use an ISPs free router which usually lock down some advanced features, typically they lock down the customers ability to change the primary and secondary DNS servers so that all of your connections are routed through the ISPs servers so they can sell your behaviour to third parties and get more money out of their customers without you knowing (unless you have had a good read of all of their Terms and Conditions, British Telecom for example do a similar thing and by default set you up with things like parental control which requires you to be going through the ISP servers aswell, so if you could change DNS servers in your router, unless you have previously logged in to BT and disabled such features of your internet, your internet will stop working completely .. sneaky bar stewards).
TLDR: Be careful what you try to change with an ISPs router, its possible you could stop your internet from working .. just an fyi if you didn't know. But even an ISPs free router should have a Guest Network to play with :).

Don't think this will work. Keep in mind the same error occurs with only 1 PC on your LAN, I highly doubt your LAN has anything to do with this, at all. It seems to be an issue with the game trying to fetch a list of lobbies to join from NMS online matchmaking servers. How many of these lobbies were started locally in your own LAN should not make any difference since the problem is with the fetching of the list, not with any other machines on your network. That was just a detail OP felt may have been important to mention, but by now I think we can safely say to have established it had nothing to do with the issue we're all experiencing.

This appears to be something only HG or maybe GoG could fix. Especially when the workaround of, "everybody quit multiplayer and join together" isn't viable because you've made many friends online and you're playing with only one or two of them. You can't demand everyone in your friendlist to stop playing for a second just because you and one other friend wants to start playing now. It's put us, at least, off playing entirely by now.