“I feel surprisingly emotional today,” Hello Games Founder Sean Murray remarks. It’s a full decade since No Man’s Sky first launched players into the open-ended sandbox of its procedurally generated universe. That big day didn’t go the way the team might have wished; we could sit here for hours litigating whether Hello Games overpromised to an enthusiastic audience, or simply didn’t set the correct expectations for its creation. None of that matters now. No Man’s Sky has grown into unquestionably one of the best space games ever, and a much-needed reminder of what can be achieved when developers are given enough time.
In the ten years that have passed since No Man’s Sky first released, Hello Games has delivered a total of 40 major updates, all for free. It now has base building, settlements, pets, mechs, living ships, and exocraft. The developer introduced expeditions to reward shared fresh playthroughs, and rebuilt its universe “several times over.” Just last year it completely redesigned player ships from the ground up to allow you and your friends to hang out inside them. In doing so, it also won the Game Award for ‘Best Ongoing Game’ of 2025, and the BAFTA for ‘Evolving Game’ a few months later.
“Perhaps you were there ten years ago, or maybe you joined later,” Murray muses. “It’s very cool to me that all around the universe, other Travellers have woken up on countless 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,” Murray continues. “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.”
Murray reflects on the image that came to define the game’s early days, of him and the Hello Games team enthusiastically celebrating the completion of its development. “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 really not 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 has ever been,” Murray comments. He points out that last year’s Voyagers update “saw more players than we’ve had since launch,” and yet despite that, “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,” Murray concludes. He teases that alongside work on the upcoming Light No Fire, Hello Games still has “big things” planned for NMS, with the next upcoming update titled ‘Cosmos.’
“I consider myself exceedingly lucky to work with the people I do, on a game I love with one of the nicest communities in videogames. 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.”
In recent years, we’ve seen many ambitious projects launch to middling reception, only to quickly be abandoned by their publishers when they didn’t hit immediately. Funding is cut, teams are laid off, and ‘what could have been’ is consigned to the bargain bin, or worse, a sad Wikipedia entry about a game you can no longer play. No Man’s Sky is a shining beacon in dark times for the industry; a reminder that time can heal all wounds. I hope that a decade from now we’ll be singing similar praises about other once-maligned games that were given the chance to find their spark.
