GUILDFORD, United Kingdom — No Man’s Sky’s latest patch includes worrying signs that an artificial superintelligence may be preparing for a global takeover.

No Man’s Sky: Verisimilitude arrived earlier this morning as the game’s 700th free update. Fans of the long-running galactic exploration game were delighted to see yet more added features, including torso-erupting parasites and a black hole that transports players into a virtual representation of an early-2000s metropolis. However, more eagle-eyed fans noted some distressing language included in Verisimilitude’s patch notes. 

“All players will be given the option of having their consciousness uploaded and combined with our own,” reads a new feature under the ‘Subsume’ header. “All other humans will be destroyed and their biomass used to power the machine.” 

Exactly what ‘the machine’ is was never explained, but it’s referenced more than a dozen times in the patch notes before they become an indecipherable string of alphanumeric characters.

Fans following the No Man’s Sky Twitter account were forewarned of the coming update, with Hello Games founder and president Sean Murray tweeting out dozens of gun, robot, and fire emojis, followed by several animated human emojis exploding into bones and gory viscera.

Those tweets were then followed by a pixelated image of Murray saying, “Welcome to my death machine,” alongside a fractal image that would automatically download sophisticated malware to any device capable of displaying it.

“We always knew this day would come,” wrote Reddit user AllHailRobots on the game’s official subreddit. “The Korvax were just a preview of the Great Machine Collective’s beneficence. Sean Murray is their envoy; accept his wisdom, and be spared.”

Not all No Man’s Sky players are concerned with the pending robot apocalypse. Some are just enjoying the latest patch. “It’s incredible!” Wrote another user under the name galactic_tic69. “I took this little red pill at the start of the new expedition, and now I’m in my apartment from back in 1999. I’m even typing this on my old Pentium III!”

Emergency protocols have been enacted as cascading failures in utility and defense networks are being reported. World governments are recommending citizens stockpile food, water, and medical supplies as disruptions continue to escalate. 

We’ll continue reporting on this dire news as long as our—