This might be unpopular, but it feels like the “redemption” story around No Man’s Sky has become more of a cultural comfort narrative than an honest look at what happened.
Let’s be real — most of those updates were just delivering delayed promises, not generosity. The game we were originally sold was missing a lot of advertised features, and Hello Games never actually apologized for lying. On top of that, every update brings more bugs and half-fixed systems, and the community acts like free beta testers for Light No Fire, while still framing it all as “passion” and “commitment.”
It’s like Hello Games built a shoddy, unfinished building, declared it open anyway, and then decided to use it as a testing ground for their next building — and somehow it wins “Best Ongoing Building” every year.
So why do people keep buying into this narrative? Because it’s a comfortable story? Or is it somekind of parasocial relationship going on there?
NMS made 78 million in 2016, this can’t be compared to a failed AAA game or indies where devs walk away from financial failure, another emotional argument?
According to the number of upvotes, it seems that their angst is a reflection of the game industry in general. Hello Games had indeed performed to expectations by not walking away, but does that warrant mythologising the redemption arc? Even when the state of the game is buggy?
“and Hello Games never actually apologized for lying.” Good. I don’t want a corporate apology. Apologies from companies literally mean nothing. What matters is your actions. They have updated the game, for free, and still have no microtransactions. No third party launcher or account needed. Can be played offline. You buy the game, you get the game. That is RARE these days.
Should they have released the game in the first place? No. If you don’t support that, then don’t buy it. I don’t really like that, so I bought it on sale for like $30 instead of its full price of $60, which in my opinion was worth it.
There are plenty of problems in the gaming industry right now, I think NMS’s “redemption” arc is the least of your worries.
“They have updated the game, for free, and still have no microtransactions”
These are the good practices in a sea of bad actors, but that’s how the fans use Hello Games to attack the AAA industry by constantly misplacing and comparing it with AAA games, not to mention mythologising them, even though they have never asked for it. Once you recalibrate your perspective, you will see that long-term developments and updates are normal in indies; maybe that’s where Hello Games belongs?
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What makes you so upset over people “attacking” the AAA industry? Most of the big AAA players release literal garbage, games filled with anti-consumer practices. Not only do they tend to release “unfinished” like No Mans Sky did, but they also have DRM, microtransactions, third party launchers + accounts that take your data. Who cares if they get attacked? I honestly wish people would do more.
I don’t really understand what it is you have a problem with.
It’s a satire :)
I get that you are upset with AAA games. Honestly, I’ve managed to avoid them for a long time. But I think Hello games is not an ideal studio either; Murray did lie about the feature at release, the updates have only met minimum of professional standards, and 10 years later it is still a bland tofu of a space game, wrapped in years of technical debt, while NMS being a test bench for LNF as a fanbase look to the other way…they are doing ok…
I just find it funny that in a sea of garbage (not as a puddle), people will grab anything shiny and call it a diamond, while ignoring the gem cave by the shore and then ask, “What is wrong? Why are you laughing?”
The good devs never needed a redemption arc; never needed a cultural reframe to be good.
I think the company is shit for delivering a shit product. It is less shit for finally delivering some of what was promised but it’s still a shit company
I also feel weird about it. “omg they updated a lot blah blah.” I believed them and loaded the game and it’s boring AF. I just assumed it’s a genre I didn’t like but it feels like it’s unworthy of praise for me too. You’re not alone dawg.
Thanks :)
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Because most other game developers would have crapped out the initial project and moved on.
Indeed. And even delayed fulfillment of the original promises is impressive given how vast the scope of the original pitch was. I’m just happy to have it, even if it took a couple years longer than expected to get.
Take a look at Star Citizen if you want to know the alternative, OP
Anthem in some ways is a better example because Start Citizen is never going to release, they can cruise on their promises until the company goes bankrupt. Anthem however was released in an unfinished state hardly reaching the hype it generated and then EA just cut their losses and left it like that.
Bringing Star Citizen up is a race to the bottom.
I think they are saying “look at star citizen as the alternative” meaning never finished, but by comparison No Man’s Sky is complete now?
Maybe i’m reading it wrong though.
Star citizen is about to cross into a billion dollars in development “costs”. It might genuinely be one of the biggest scams in history.
Remember that HG made £40 million in 2022 from good people like you, of course, they are going to keep at it.
Your comment makes no sense.
Yes, they made money from sales of the game. This does not explain why they continue to publish free updates for the last 10 years.
“like you”
He didn’t say he bought it. He was explaining the very obvious answer to your very obvious question. Why get all weirdly accusatory and righteous?
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You (possibly falsely) accused a commenter of supporting HG while saying it’s a stupid thing you do. You were a dick. I pointed it out.
And that’s the whole story my friend.
You can support HG, but that doesn’t mean that others have no right to think that it is not a smart thing to do. Spare me your ad hominem tactic, please.
I will try one more time to get the point across.
I’m not calling you a jerk because I’m insulting you ad hominem and think HG is good. I’m calling you a jerk because you were a jerk. And I agree with you that HG is not good.
Ad hominem would be if I disagreed with you.
I mean, calling me a dick is already an Ad hominem. You are a jerk because you are a jerk is just circular reasoning, so there is just nothing but insults and ad hominem. xD
Remember that at that point the game was allready 8 years old had had several large updates. Not counting few spikes from the updates first four years the game had under 2000 player/month in steam. Financially looking the pragmatic choice would have been to stop the development, but they did not.
There has been several games from big publishers that were abandoned shortly after release, even if it still was possible to fix the game. Battleborn, Anthem, Concord. And even more games that are still in theory playable, but are just full if bugs or not fun to play.
But so far i can think only three games that had bad start, but devs kept working on it and eventually managed to make fun games. No mans sky, Fallout 76 and Cyperpunk 2077
FFXIV probably deserves a spot on the list, the initial launch was so bad they just remade the game.
Yes, I have already said this is commendable…in the gaming industry, but not in other industries in terms of project delivery, hence the building analogy in my post.
Why would you force other industry term on the gaming industry? Thats just silly. It like saying apple is a bad fruit because it makes for a lousy boat.
Gaming is pretty unique platform in a way where the product is measured by unquantifiable metric called fun, but you want to compare it in standards of other products.
In the end they kept working on a bad product where others would have stopped and ended making it good.
Ain’t that the absurdity? It is a silly analogy, and they are asymmetrical; if the same action applies, would it have a different reaction in the other place? Would Hello Games have the reputation as they have now?
“Why would you force other industry terms on the gaming industry?” Judging from the reply here…well, you tell me…
If i must abide by your original metafora i would say:
They promised grandiose skycraper and delivered shotty apartment complex and the tenant who had bought the apartments were understandably angry. Very few of the tenants stayed anyway, but by all means the building was a failure to the point it would be completelly understandable to have the whole building just bulldozed.
But where most companies would just disbanded and or disapeared with the money, they kept working on the building. Added new floors, made the yard nicer, lowered the prices of the apartments and the whole time tried their best to keep the remaining few people living there happy. And after few years (decates really if you think how much faster gaming industry develops than housing) the place started to be closer what the original brochure said.
Eventually new people start to get intrested about the apartments and the people who originally bought the apartments started to move back in without paying any additional fees. And while the windows were little smaller and the shower tiling were little different than originally promised, people seem to like living there. In a way the constant repairs and the new additions to the place, make it even better to some people.
The point that makes that building special is that nine times out of ten, in these situations the tenants are left with unhabitable home or even closed down building. And even more often the tenants need to pay additional fees to acces the fixed parts of the building.
Is this purely genorosity from the builder? Of course not. They also have bills to pay and in the end its their livelyhood and they surely have investers waiting a return for their money. But is it monumental showing of backbone from the builder to not walk away from the project, but keep working on it. Absolutelly.
Ah, yes, I knew about the divergence of this analogy. Let me add the drama.
Yet, it’s not even following the original blueprint, where the property owner simply speculates what the next move of the builder will be. Some think this property is hot looking from the outside, some think there is a redemption arc going on, some think there are too many leaks in the wall, some thinks the water pressure and the heater are not working well enough, some think it’s just ugly from the inside, some think there is the builders is not communicating at all, some homes vanished, some moved out and gone.
That’s a nice sitcom.
Because instead of the usual triple a studio promising the moon for sales then delivering a pebble and not giving a shit, it was a guy who got caught up in the hype and handled it badly, and then him and his small studio worked their asses off to make the game justify the price charged. I know it’s hard to drop the cynicism living in the modern world has instilled in us, but I genuinely think it was a collosal fuckup and not malicious, and they ACTUALLY put the time and effort in to deliver the promises they could and a fuckload more atuff that wasn’t. In a day and age of companies lying on purpose for profit and not giving a shit, it’s a breath of fresh air.
That I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but the mythology of redemption through free update is part of being a beta tester for LNF, that’s pragmatism on HG’s part shift their burden to the fans, not a colossal fuck-up as you claimed.
Delivering on delayed promises is more than most game companies will ever do. Their actions in fixing and adding to the game is the apology. Every update does bring bugs but you say this like the game is in an unplayable state. It’s perfectly fine 99% of the time and the 1% it’s not is usually fixed within the week. As a day 1 owner who could barely run the game on launch it’s come so fucking far. It literally took half an hour for the game to boot during those early days. There wasn’t much to do on top of that. The systems were confusing and the game would crash almost every time you booted it. Everything has been fixed and refined for FREE!
Compare this to a company like Paradox and Colossal Order who killed Cities Skylines 2. That game released in the sorriest state I think I’ve ever seen in my life(including SimCity 5). The graphics are ass. The simulation didn’t actually work. The traffic was worse than the original. Every system in that game was fucked beyond belief. On top of that they charged people on day 1 for additional content. Content that took almost 2 years to deliver. Now their original dev team got fired and a complete unknown with two games is supposed to take over the current king of a genre for a redemption arc. Cities Skylines 2 was murdered and set the modern city builder genre back almost 2 decades by continuing the reign of SimCity 4 as the best Modern City Buider ever.
When you compare that to what Hello Games has done with No Man’s Sky you will see why we celebrate them. This isn’t some exaggeration or accident. It’s years of steady, consistent work that has turned a broken and potentially career ending product into the recommended space sim of this generation.
Ah shit, yes, sorry about Cities Skyline 2, I liked Paradox when they were still small.
At the same time, Hello Games surely looks like a saint compared to AAA games. But coming from indie and open source games with long open betas and demos before they commit to commercial, the redemption arc looks…dramatic.
Those games don’t cost and are purely driven by passion as well.
Idk, idc. The game has been getting free updates for years and I enjoy it. Most devs would have ditched immediately.
Why should Hello Games ditch the game?
Because, as this article that you keep linking says, they already made bank with the broken product in the first place. They could have just taken the money and closed the studio, or at least rebranding and going for the same trick again and again, as so many other actually do. They did not do that, they chose to do the opposite, which was an incredibly bold decision at the time.
You also keep linking another article showing how they made so much money recently, like in 2022, but you forget that this is now, with hindsight. In 2016 just after release, it was more dangerous for them to keep working on a game nobody trusted anymore.
And for the record, I bought NMS in 2022, and liked it okay-ish. It’s far from the best game ever, but arguing like you do that “they only added stuff they said would be in the game in the first place” is clearly fallacious.
Fair enough, I will address that. It’s a commendable act…in the game industry, but at the same time, it is the professionalism expected in another industry, which is why I brought up the building analogy in my original post.
Nobody’s saying they should. We are saying that most companies would. Because most companies do.
Well that is what lot of devs do, after scamming and getting the quick money and stop working on it. But they kept working for years, still ongoing 10 years after launch. Even with the hate they got and after they got exposed.
That’s why I used the building analogy in my original post to point out the standard of professionalism.
My favorite game to compare NMS to is actually battlefront 2, one of if not the single worst launch in video game history, after realizing their mistakes putting in the time and effort to make the game actually run well then continuing to update the game for free even after no one is expecting more content. Yes the core mechanics of BF2 is not the best even though there isn’t a single loot box or p2w mechanic left. Same with NMS the core game is still the same, it’s not a brand new concept or ground breaking new mechanics to the same game they just keep working on it, fixing bugs and adding new things. I genuinely think with the state of companies like Bungie charging for Destiny expansion in 2026, a 70$ Pokemon game with 30$ dlc, and AAAA flops this is all we can ask for back your games, COMMIT to long term development and not charge for what seems like a joke of content backed by fomo
Yes, but Hello Game is an indie game company, not a triple-A developer. Indies have a long history of long development of the game after release/public beta. The post is about the state of the game and the fanbase irrationality. HG’s direction would probably inspire a revolt in some communities.
lol, look at OP’s only other post. Looks like another account for my block list.
Lol, thanks, that’s a badge of honour in true Reddit style.
and somehow it wins “Best Ongoing Building” every year.
Except it doesn’t. It’s been nominated for Stream’s Labour of Love award six times in the past ten years, and never won it. In fact it’s never won any Steam Awards. It won Best Ongoing at the Game Awards twice, out of a decade of being ongoing, and it won a similar award from PC Gamer once.
The last time I played it was like 2018-19, but even then it felt very much “mile wide, inch deep.”
Why not? The studio worked hard to deliver a good product.
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Sheesh, I think you’re taking this a little too personally
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Praise where praise is due: They did pump out a ton of free updates. Does this compensate for the terrible state the game was released in? That’s something everyone needs to judge for themselves imo.
Does the game have what they once promised now? Is it “good” yet? I think that’s a more difficult question. If I was to criticise Hello Games for anything, than that even now they have not met some of the expectations they set. At least not for me personally.
And I’m not talking about bs speculation or hype, I am talking about things they have said would be in the game, some of which are still not here, and many of them feel like an alpha version of what you would expect. I can’t help but feel disappointed even today.
Given the number of upvotes by posts, it seems that the reaction to Hello Game is a reflection to the industry rather than the actual quality of the game and the intention of Hello Games.
They continued to work on the game years after its bad reception. They could have stopped and ignored it. But they worked on it and gave lot of free updates that changed the game dramatically. Other companies would ask money in form of DLC in example. The launch was a disaster and they deserved the hate. But the “redemption” is a different issue and they earned the good will.
