What's clear is that Sean misrepresented this game. Is the game still good? I think so. For what it is (a single-player indie game made by a very small team,) I think it succeeds impressively and I am enjoying the simple but beautiful gameplay loop.
That said, the way Sean presented this game painted a FAR different picture than the reality of the final product. Not just being able to see other players, but the descriptions of a huge universe and being able to fly off into the abyss... of solar systems with real celestial mechanics governing them... no skyboxes but instead real celestial bodies.
He did not present it as a game of maps you zone between with skybox stars containing a cluster of planets that have no effect on each other. He did not present the 18 quintillion planets as "18,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible permutations of procedurally-generated variables," but instead a literal universe full of as many planets with the actual size of a physical universe containing them, each of which would be procedurally-generated as encountered.
He definitely made it explicitly sound like the rarity of encountering another player was due to the SIZE of the universe. I think it's safe to say we ALL assumed that he meant that. We see now that this is not the case. Crossing paths with others is somewhat common, which indicates a fairly small physical universe. It's merely the difference in procedural generation from planet to planet that provides for the large "number" of planets, and we have seen that the actual manifestations of these planet types are not overly-diverse. Two otherwise identical planets with some different flora placement and toxicity levels are two different planets for the purposes of "diversity" here.
So yeah I like the game, but I feel like only the game Sean described to us is worth $60. Hell, I would pay $100 for the game Sean described. The game that was released is a very pretty and imaginative indie game that is far more humble than the game Sean pitched to us in multiple ways. It's not even so much the pricing that bothers me... It's that I was really looking forward to the game Sean directly told interviewers we would be getting.
And sure, things happen during development and things often have to be scaled back or even scrapped, but for someone so active on Twitter who has been nothing but talkative about the game to say nothing of this is pretty irresponsible, in my opinion.
We got a different game than was pitched to us. Is it still good? Sure, but that is irrelevant in regard to the issue of honest representation.