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?
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.