4 ms·

I was so pissed off by the lies around the launch of this game and subsequently being refused a refund that I never went back to it.

gtaylor 2mo ago
They really turned it around. You should check it out. But yeah, super crappy launch.
- john_strinlai 2mo ago
  this is an understatement (on both fronts) in my opinion. the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it. "the engoodening of no mans sky" was a youtube video that came out ~5 years ago and covers the story of the launch up until the point the video was made. since then they've had several more really amazing (and compeltely free) updates.
  - squigz 2mo ago
    > and "turned it around" is underselling it. This. I really feel that the good will they burned up with the launch - and I'm not denying it was very poorly handled - they've made up for 10x over since then. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.
  - dev0p 2mo ago
    "Sean we forgive you" became a meme for a reason. The fact that to this day they keep working on the game is truly noteworthy; they could have called it quits at any point in time, especially after NMS got good enough. Obviously it's not purely ego driven (if at all), so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative. I suppose the fact that it sold so much throughout the years gave them enough runway to actually work on it with no worries? And I suppose that people would be skeptical of a new game launch by this studio, thus dooming them to work on NMS for eternity... we'll see how Light No Fire's launch will do.
    - noir_lord 2mo ago
      That and I'm pretty sure they are using NMS as a backport target to test systems for Light No Fire (which is an instant buy for me, Hello Games have completely redeemed themselves in my eyes).
    - john_strinlai 2mo ago
      at this point, i think they continue because of the goodwill it builds. as the other comment says, light no fire will be an instant buy for me because of the support they've given no mans sky over the last decade
    - squigz 2mo ago
      > so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative. I've been wondering about this for a few years now. Do they really sell enough new copies of the game to fund development of several new expeditions a year? I suppose they must, but it's still surprising - more so as the years went on. Honestly though, at a certain point, they could've started charging for the expeditions as DLC and I wouldn't have even complained.
    - jerlam 2mo ago
      I wonder if the ports play a role in getting additional updates over the years. Every year or so, NMS gets a port to a different platform, with a sales bump, and maybe part of that process includes adding just a little bit more to the base game.
  - parineum 2mo ago
    > the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it. Everyone says this and I really disagree. It's been a year or so since I last play but I have been playing off and on about every year. Whenever I start a new game, it feels basically the same. Once I get into the universe, there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter. The game is a classic example of a mile wide and an inch deep. Every update just seems to bring a new system that feels, in itself, feels about as satisfying as the game did on launch. Despite the valiant and admirable effort to continue updating the game (and for free), I still don't think it's come close to the game that was promised. It's still the launch game in my eyes; nothing seems to matter. I can just also build a base (or any of the other new features) that doesn't matter too. It's a fun game for maybe 30 hours a year (300 hours!) and that's an accomplishment but I don't think it's come close to fulfilling it's original promise.
    - squigz 2mo ago
      This is totally valid and many people feel similarly. I wouldn't entirely agree that it's only an inch deep (this isn't Elite Dangerous for goodness sake) - but it's certainly sometimes harder than it should be to find the deeper parts of the game. The Expeditions can really help with this, as they provide a more traditional linear, quest-driven way of going through the game.
    - ch4s3 2mo ago
      > there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter. In a lot of ways its Space Minecraft, so you have to make your own fun, your own stakes. If you don't like it, then you don't like it.
      - Capricorn2481 2mo ago
        I can't articulate why, and I'm not even a big fan of Minecraft, but it honestly feels way deeper than NMS. I think it's the fact that NMS has a lot of systems, but they are just separate, and they have a lot of limitations. Ships are separate from bases which are separate from freighters. They sometimes interact if it's explicitly coded, but nothing is allowed to be emergent. In Minecraft I can put 100 nether portals in my basement if I feel like it, and I can set up a sheep farm in hell. I can pour water into my base and have a mini pool with fish. I can make copper golems that move items, and that opens a whole can of worms. In NMS, it feels like I have no freedom to experiment at all. For that reason, it's been pretty hard to get into. Everything feels so baked in place. The only thing that really scratched that itch of mine was making big farming factories. But I was not interested after that.
  - blakespot 2mo ago
    From the engoodening video: “…they never added pay-to-win, they never added microtransasctions or paid DLC, they never made VR as a second game. They didn’t give up on the game or scale their resources back to do it. They didn’t come out and call gamers entitled, they didn’t have loot boxes, they didn’t start work on the next big project or sequel. They didn’t do much of anything except get back to work.” https://nmsspot.com/2020/01/09/a-walk-through-the-no-mans-sky-redemption-story/ https://nmsspot.com/2020/01/09/a-walk-through-the-no-mans-sk...
  - pndy 2mo ago
    Just a side note if someone decides to watch that The Engoodening "docu-meme": the channel author reads a very "rich" fanfic involving Sean at the end of the video - you've been warned lol As for NMS itself, it all comes if you dig survival and building type of games, and you'd to step into Star Trek-style away missions.
kingkongjaffa 2mo ago
I think it's fair to say they started off bad, but redeemed themselves. In contrast Star Citizen is far more ambitious but shows 0 sign of ever actually landing. NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though and the lack of good individual characters does leave it feeling more like exploration sandbox than a really compelling world you care about.
drakythe 2mo ago
I'm curious who refused you the refund? I seem to recall it being refunded pretty steadily by everyone who sold it digitally. Maybe I am misremembering. Still entirely fair to have been turned off by the experience. Plenty of developers or publishers I don't purchase from anymore due to similar shenanigans.
Waterluvian 2mo ago
I don't always seem to be able to stick to my values, but this time it was easy to just write them off and never look back. I think maybe because there's just so many games being released every single day that this is a sufficiently competitive market. It's not like I'm deciding to never take the city bus again.
MisterTea 2mo ago
At least it didn't drive you to smoke crack like it did to of my friends. Though ironically he still plays to this day though a lot less than he used to.
- jambalaya8 2mo ago
  i used to know someone who used to play this game; he eventually killed himself. i am sure most people that play this game won't experience it that way.
  - MisterTea 2mo ago
    My friend does have some mental issues. Some of these tedious games really suck them in and it becomes personal when things go wrong and it can trigger an episode. For my friend he almost smashed his PC but instead left the house, went to a bar where he got drunk then met a dude who had some rock and made poor choices. Edit: I should add he looks back at that moment humorously but yeah, NMS drove him to smoke crack.
jm4 2mo ago
Everyone is well aware of how crappy the launch was. From the article: "Speaking of No Man’s Sky’s updates, there have been 286 of them since launch. Hello Games has released 54 major updates as well as 232 smaller patch/updates across these ten years. That is a total of 286 updates—and every one has been free. Hello Games has never introduced paid DLC, microtransactions, loot boxes, or any such thing. Over the life of the game, they have been updating it at basically a fever pitch—and always for free, and free, the updates shall remain. This is pretty unheard of in the game industry." These guys have done everything humanly possible to make things right. I think they had things pretty much fixed up within a couple years or so. They are doing a better job than virtually everyone in the gaming industry and have been doing it for most of their existence at this point. Maybe you could stop holding a grudge 10 years later.

gtaylor 2mo ago

They really turned it around. You should check it out. But yeah, super crappy launch.

john_strinlai 2mo ago
this is an understatement (on both fronts) in my opinion. the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it. "the engoodening of no mans sky" was a youtube video that came out ~5 years ago and covers the story of the launch up until the point the video was made. since then they've had several more really amazing (and compeltely free) updates.
- squigz 2mo ago
  > and "turned it around" is underselling it. This. I really feel that the good will they burned up with the launch - and I'm not denying it was very poorly handled - they've made up for 10x over since then. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.
- dev0p 2mo ago
  "Sean we forgive you" became a meme for a reason. The fact that to this day they keep working on the game is truly noteworthy; they could have called it quits at any point in time, especially after NMS got good enough. Obviously it's not purely ego driven (if at all), so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative. I suppose the fact that it sold so much throughout the years gave them enough runway to actually work on it with no worries? And I suppose that people would be skeptical of a new game launch by this studio, thus dooming them to work on NMS for eternity... we'll see how Light No Fire's launch will do.
  - noir_lord 2mo ago
    That and I'm pretty sure they are using NMS as a backport target to test systems for Light No Fire (which is an instant buy for me, Hello Games have completely redeemed themselves in my eyes).
  - john_strinlai 2mo ago
    at this point, i think they continue because of the goodwill it builds. as the other comment says, light no fire will be an instant buy for me because of the support they've given no mans sky over the last decade
  - squigz 2mo ago
    > so I wonder how the financial aspect plays into that narrative. I've been wondering about this for a few years now. Do they really sell enough new copies of the game to fund development of several new expeditions a year? I suppose they must, but it's still surprising - more so as the years went on. Honestly though, at a certain point, they could've started charging for the expeditions as DLC and I wouldn't have even complained.
  - jerlam 2mo ago
    I wonder if the ports play a role in getting additional updates over the years. Every year or so, NMS gets a port to a different platform, with a sales bump, and maybe part of that process includes adding just a little bit more to the base game.
- parineum 2mo ago
  > the launch was beyond super crappy, and "turned it around" is underselling it. Everyone says this and I really disagree. It's been a year or so since I last play but I have been playing off and on about every year. Whenever I start a new game, it feels basically the same. Once I get into the universe, there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter. The game is a classic example of a mile wide and an inch deep. Every update just seems to bring a new system that feels, in itself, feels about as satisfying as the game did on launch. Despite the valiant and admirable effort to continue updating the game (and for free), I still don't think it's come close to the game that was promised. It's still the launch game in my eyes; nothing seems to matter. I can just also build a base (or any of the other new features) that doesn't matter too. It's a fun game for maybe 30 hours a year (300 hours!) and that's an accomplishment but I don't think it's come close to fulfilling it's original promise.
  - squigz 2mo ago
    This is totally valid and many people feel similarly. I wouldn't entirely agree that it's only an inch deep (this isn't Elite Dangerous for goodness sake) - but it's certainly sometimes harder than it should be to find the deeper parts of the game. The Expeditions can really help with this, as they provide a more traditional linear, quest-driven way of going through the game.
  - ch4s3 2mo ago
    > there are way more things to do but nome of them feel like they matter. In a lot of ways its Space Minecraft, so you have to make your own fun, your own stakes. If you don't like it, then you don't like it.
    - Capricorn2481 2mo ago
      I can't articulate why, and I'm not even a big fan of Minecraft, but it honestly feels way deeper than NMS. I think it's the fact that NMS has a lot of systems, but they are just separate, and they have a lot of limitations. Ships are separate from bases which are separate from freighters. They sometimes interact if it's explicitly coded, but nothing is allowed to be emergent. In Minecraft I can put 100 nether portals in my basement if I feel like it, and I can set up a sheep farm in hell. I can pour water into my base and have a mini pool with fish. I can make copper golems that move items, and that opens a whole can of worms. In NMS, it feels like I have no freedom to experiment at all. For that reason, it's been pretty hard to get into. Everything feels so baked in place. The only thing that really scratched that itch of mine was making big farming factories. But I was not interested after that.
- blakespot 2mo ago
  From the engoodening video: “…they never added pay-to-win, they never added microtransasctions or paid DLC, they never made VR as a second game. They didn’t give up on the game or scale their resources back to do it. They didn’t come out and call gamers entitled, they didn’t have loot boxes, they didn’t start work on the next big project or sequel. They didn’t do much of anything except get back to work.” https://nmsspot.com/2020/01/09/a-walk-through-the-no-mans-sky-redemption-story/ https://nmsspot.com/2020/01/09/a-walk-through-the-no-mans-sk...
- pndy 2mo ago
  Just a side note if someone decides to watch that The Engoodening "docu-meme": the channel author reads a very "rich" fanfic involving Sean at the end of the video - you've been warned lol As for NMS itself, it all comes if you dig survival and building type of games, and you'd to step into Star Trek-style away missions.

kingkongjaffa 2mo ago

I think it's fair to say they started off bad, but redeemed themselves. In contrast Star Citizen is far more ambitious but shows 0 sign of ever actually landing. NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though and the lack of good individual characters does leave it feeling more like exploration sandbox than a really compelling world you care about.

drakythe 2mo ago

I'm curious who refused you the refund? I seem to recall it being refunded pretty steadily by everyone who sold it digitally. Maybe I am misremembering. Still entirely fair to have been turned off by the experience. Plenty of developers or publishers I don't purchase from anymore due to similar shenanigans.

Waterluvian 2mo ago

I don't always seem to be able to stick to my values, but this time it was easy to just write them off and never look back. I think maybe because there's just so many games being released every single day that this is a sufficiently competitive market. It's not like I'm deciding to never take the city bus again.

MisterTea 2mo ago

At least it didn't drive you to smoke crack like it did to of my friends. Though ironically he still plays to this day though a lot less than he used to.

jambalaya8 2mo ago
i used to know someone who used to play this game; he eventually killed himself. i am sure most people that play this game won't experience it that way.
- MisterTea 2mo ago
  My friend does have some mental issues. Some of these tedious games really suck them in and it becomes personal when things go wrong and it can trigger an episode. For my friend he almost smashed his PC but instead left the house, went to a bar where he got drunk then met a dude who had some rock and made poor choices. Edit: I should add he looks back at that moment humorously but yeah, NMS drove him to smoke crack.

jm4 2mo ago

Everyone is well aware of how crappy the launch was. From the article: "Speaking of No Man’s Sky’s updates, there have been 286 of them since launch. Hello Games has released 54 major updates as well as 232 smaller patch/updates across these ten years. That is a total of 286 updates—and every one has been free. Hello Games has never introduced paid DLC, microtransactions, loot boxes, or any such thing. Over the life of the game, they have been updating it at basically a fever pitch—and always for free, and free, the updates shall remain. This is pretty unheard of in the game industry." These guys have done everything humanly possible to make things right. I think they had things pretty much fixed up within a couple years or so. They are doing a better job than virtually everyone in the gaming industry and have been doing it for most of their existence at this point. Maybe you could stop holding a grudge 10 years later.