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?
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.
https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/09/30/august-2016-digital-sales-report-no-mans-sky-generated-78-million/
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.
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
That’s literally not what an ad hominem is. I can’t make you understand this. You need to read the wiki page.
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.
I feel like i got it now. You want to add drama. You are the neighbor yelling over the fence, the one who seems to have something against the houses, even if it literaly does not effect on their life at all.
This is why i did not want to respond to your analogy from the beginning. It does not lead to anywhere as everything is makebeliview.
Facts.
The game is overwhelmingly positive status on steam. Recently almost 90% of the people are satisfied to the product.
Its player base keeps getting bigger.
The game is soon 10 years old, but it keeps getting updates.
Hello Games have been working on the game in the situation where industry standard would have been to stop.