RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games is celebrating its 10-year anniversary with a few eye-catching stats and a tease for the upcoming update.
The hotly anticipated No Man’s Sky launched on August 9, 2016 on PS4 and PC to tens of thousands of negative reviews on Steam, with players complaining about broken promises and a lack of meaningful content, particularly on the multiplayer side. The game quickly settled on the dreaded ‘overwhelmingly negative’ Steam user review rating, a clear sign to anyone who visited its Steam page that something was very wrong.
But Guildford, England-based developer Hello Games continued to update No Man’s Sky over the years, improving player sentiment to the point where it is now considered superb. It took two years to hit ‘mixed,’ then another three to hit ‘mostly positive.’ At the time, five years after launch, Tim Woodley, Head of Publishing at Hello Games, explained how hard it was to claw back Steam user reviews from such a low base . No Man’s Sky now sits on ‘very positive’ on Steam user reviews.
Today, Hello Games development chief Sean Murray penned a note to fans expressing his delight that No Man’s Sky has stood the test of time, confirming that this year has seen the game's highest player numbers since launch. Murray even revealed an eye-catching stat: even now, a decade after launch, players have explored less than 1% of the planets in No Man’s Sky.
No Man’s Sky features a procedurally generated deterministic open world universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 to be exact). Ahead of No Man’s Sky’s release, Hello Games told IGN it would take 585 billion years to see them all. So yes, less than 1% sounds about right. That's a lot of video game planets that are up and running but will never be seen!
Murray also used the anniversary to tease No Man’s Sky’s next update, Cosmos, proving that support for the game will continue beyond the 10-year mark. Hello Games is also busy working on its next game, Light No Fire , which is about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth. We haven't heard anything about it since it was revealed at The Game Awards 2023 .
Sean Murray’s open letter to No Man’s Sky fans in full:
Hello!
I feel surprisingly emotional today. Ten years ago, on 9th August 2016, travellers across the universe set foot on their first alien planet in No Man’s Sky.
Perhaps you were there ten years ago, or maybe you joined later. It’s very cool to me that all around the universe, other Travellers have woken up on countless other planets, light years apart from each other. They took their first steps on their first planet and brought a new unexplored universe into existence together.
Since then millions of players have made No Man’s Sky their home, created insane bases, built communities, made friends, and built really creative custom ships.
For any game to reach its ten-year milestone is impressive and I think that is especially true for No Man’s Sky. It’s really a testament to the passion of the team here and of the players for the game, that this year we’ve seen our highest player numbers since launch, and won a TGA and BAFTA for best evolving game.
Over the last decade, the No Man’s Sky players have joined us in another type of journey as we grew, expanded and deepened what No Man’s Sky could be. With now 40 major updates, all free, we have expanded our sandbox universe with base-building, exocraft, settlements, mechs, pets, living ships, expeditions and rebuilt the universe several times over. Support for Switch, XBox, VR, PSVR, Switch 2, PS5, XBX and more has been added along the way. In fact No Man’s Sky is supported on about as many platforms as there are team members!
It became a bit of a meme at the time, me holding up the gold master disc of No Man’s Sky but I’m proud to say that most of the people in that photo are still at Hello. The No Man’s Sky team has evolved over that period of course, but it is not really that much bigger.
Since then tens of millions of Travellers have spent hundreds of millions of hours exploring and sharing their discoveries and the universe is more vibrant now than it ever has been. Voyagers released last year saw more players than we’ve had since launch… and still, all these years later players have explored less than 1% of the planets in No Man’s Sky.
In a similar way our small team feels we have a lot left to explore in what No Man’s Sky can be. In the background we are busy cooking on our next game Light No Fire, and big things for the future of No Man’s Sky, with the tease of our upcoming update titled “COSMOS”. More will follow!
I consider myself exceedingly lucky to work with the people I do, on a game I love with one of the nicest communities in video games. If you’re reading this, then it is because you have shown us a kindness over that period. Big or small that helps Hello Games do what we do. For that I am truly grateful.
Thank you so much,
Sean
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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