Hello Games is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of its incredible space-faring survival game, No Man’s Sky, which first launched for PS4 and PC on August 9, 2016. And to commemorate the occasion, the studio has published a brief but wonderful video as well as a statement from its personable managing director, Sean Murray.
The two-minute video does a fantastic job of chronicling the game’s entire, 10-year history and showcasing just how immense of an effort the folks at Hello Games have made to keep it going through more than 40 major – and completely free – updates.
It’s quite incredible to watch it all back in sequence and see how much has been added to the game since those tentative, tenuous early days, and it’s a testament to the resilience of a studio that refused to give up after a lukewarm initial reception and instead went on to make what is arguably one of the greatest ongoing video games of our time.
It also ends with a first tease of what’s yet to come. And yes, there is more to come. Take a look for yourself:
If you’ve somehow missed No Man’s Sky over the years, or it’s been a while between flights, hopefully the video above gives you reason to go back and check out what’s new. I’m particularly fond of the Xeno Arena update, which effectively adds a Pokémon-esque creature collecting and battling element.
The game’s next major update, as the video reveals, will be titled COSMOS. No idea what it’ll be, but the name alone sounds very exciting!
And here’s Sean Murray’s statement 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
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Born into the world of video games through SEGA, and in particular Sonic the Hedgehog, Kieron’s gaming tastes now consist of the latest, shiny AAA thing, an indie darling or two, and an embarrassing number of hours of Balatro.