I think a big congratulations are in order to the team at Hello Games and their developer-in-chief, Sean Murray, who will no doubt be celebrating after No Man’s Sky just reached a significant milestone: August 9th was the game’s tenth anniversary since take-off.
I was EIC at Gamereactor UK back when No Man’s Sky first came out in 2016, and while the review we ran at the time was particularly favourable, I was not personally convinced. This was despite the game’s obviously huge potential and the fact that I really wanted it to be good. NMS was a victim of the hype machine, pure and simple, and it could never live up to the huge ambitions of its creators. Or so we thought…
The launch of No Man’s Sky might have been rocky, with player backlash aimed at the game’s underdeveloped state; however, everything that has happened since then is a testament to the passion and professionalism of Hello Games.
The studio has been diligently porting, upgrading, repairing, and rebuilding No Man’s Sky ever since its ill-fated launch, and in the last decade (!) the studio has put out a tremendous amount of content that has absolutely transformed the game. The graphic above really does paint a picture of constant iteration and refinement.
Best of all, despite all the changes and additions, No Man’s Sky still manages to feel vast, even empty at times. It just no longer feels hollow – a subtle but key difference that really matters, and I think it’s the secret sauce that keeps players coming back year after year.
To mark the anniversary, Hello Games has dropped a new trailer that showcases the staggering evolution of No Man’s Sky. There have been so many massive updates – all of them free to existing players – over the years, many I remember and some that snuck past me. What’s more, the montage wraps up with a hint at what’s to come… Cosmos.
Finally, I’m going to leave you with a thought plucked from the Steam post where I found this lot. It’s HG’s awesome fact, so I’ll let them tell it:
Since [launch], 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… and still, all these years later, players have explored less than 1% of the planets in No Man’s Sky.
Congratulations to everyone at HelloGames, and here’s to another ten years of No Man’s Sky!
