No Man's Sky: Finally rated "very positive" after eight years

Someone is happy: "Holy shit you guys - it happened 🥳". This is how Sean Murray, founder of developer studio Hello Games, introduces his tweet on X on 28 November. And there is reason to celebrate, as his studio's biggest and most important game, "No Man's Sky", has reached a milestone that the company has worked hard for a long time to achieve: 80 per cent of the more than 245,000 reviews on Steam now recommend the game, resulting in a "very positive" rating.

Murray thanks us with a triple "Thank you" and concludes his post with "You have no idea what this means for us". To get an idea, it's worth taking a look at the past.

"No Man's Sky" raised huge expectations among players before its release in August 2016. The studio promised an almost infinitely large, procedurally generated universe that you could explore freely. The option to play together with others was also announced.

The release: The hype train crashes into the wall

However, only a small team was behind "No Man's Sky" and they were unable to fulfil expectations. When it was released, the game was plagued by bugs and fell far short of what was promised. More than 210,000 gamers were in the game at the same time at the peak time after the launch - but most of them were disappointed. There was no multiplayer function, no base building and no vehicles. The promised different planets were too similar and the NPC factions were not fully developed.

In August 2016, the game received 37,801 reviews according to SteamDB, of which only around 40 per cent were positive. A disaster for Hello Games - not to mention the fact that in the weeks following the release, those responsible did not clearly communicate how to proceed.

Eight years of free content updates

If you promise too much and then fail to deliver, you deserve to be penalised for it. However, the studio took the criticism seriously and managed to win back the trust of the gaming community in the years that followed. The team continued to work on the game and released bug fixes and patches to make the game what was promised before release.

Base building was added in November 2016, exploration vehicles were implemented in March 2017 and the multiplayer function finally appeared with the Next update in July 2018. All updates were and are free of charge. To Hello Games' credit, there are no microtransactions, a season pass or expensive DLCs.

So the ratings slowly recovered and because Hello Games kept delivering new content, more and more players became interested in "No Man's Sky" over the years. The game never reached the all-time peak of simultaneous players on Steam again, but since mid-2019 there have always been around 10,000 players online - and the trend is rising. For November 2024, SteamDB indicates more than 21,000 simultaneous players.

"No Man's Sky" today

The "recent ratings" of the game, i.e. the last 30 days, have improved significantly for a long time. The current rate of recent positive reviews is 94 per cent. However, the many negative reviews from the early days are dragging down the overall average. The fact that it now stands at 80 per cent is therefore a great achievement. Nobody would have expected this in the months following the release and only a few games manage to win the favour of gamers again after such a release disaster.

Here is a trailer just a few months old:

Work is currently continuing on the game. Most recently, the Aquarius update was released in September, bringing with it a fishing feature and various equipment and decorative items. According to an announcement, there have also been five Community events so far this year, in which the player community can take part in a larger event together and receive special rewards. Further events will follow over Christmas.

I'll always think of "No Man's Sky" as "that game that failed terribly at first". It deserves the addition "...but in the end it became excellent".