Summary
- No Man's Sky saw a surge in player numbers after the recent Worlds Part 1 update, attracting close to 49,000 concurrent players.
- The 5.0 Update introduces a new Expedition, fixes a wide range of bugs, and adds several quality-of-life improvements.
- Hello Games' upcoming project, Light No Fire, promises to be more ambitious than No Man's Sky.
Player numbers for No Man's Sky have reached a five-year-high following the recent release of Worlds Part 1, a massive update that, among other things, added a host of new content to the game and overhauled some aspects of the sci-fi experience's graphics. No Man's Sky developer Hello Games has already started working on a new project, but the studio has assured fans that work on its earlier survival title is far from over.
Aside from introducing a new Expedition, delivering a long list of bug fixes, and providing several quality-of-life improvements, the 5.0 Update for No Man's Sky essentially transformed the game's visual presentation. In a blog post that was released before Worlds Part 1 went live on July 17, Hello Games founder Sean Murray highlighted some of the latest build's most notable changes, including more detailed shadows, new volumetrics, higher definition water, and even reworked wind simulation. According to Murray, the studio added these improvements in the hopes of making gamers feel as if they had stepped onto the cover of a science fiction book while spending time in No Man's Sky, and it seems as though the company's efforts have paid off, with players flocking to the game.
No Man's Sky Bug Hints at Massive New Feature for Worlds Part 2 Update
Some No Man's Sky fans notice a new but as-yet unused resource in the game that has massive implications for part two of the Worlds update.
No Man's Sky reached close to 49,000 concurrent players just a few days after Update 5.0 was released according to data provided by the analytics website SteamDB. The game has not attracted this many players since August 2019, or around the time Update 2.0 for No Man's Sky was added to the title. Worlds Part 1 has also boosted sales, as No Man's Sky has become one of Steam's top sellers during the week of Update 5.0's release. The survival title was already among the highest-selling games on the Valve-owned platform in 2023.
No Man's Sky Peak Player Count - July 2024
- Around 48,000
Hello Games released Patch 5.00.1 on July 19, resolving a number of reported issues for PC players. An even newer update, Patch 5.01, went live on the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game a few days later, on July 22. Among the problems both patches addressed was a crash related to NPC interactions on freighters, as well as one that involved the new Brood Mother enemy in No Man's Sky.
During The Game Awards 2023, Hello Games unveiled its newest project, Light No Fire, to the public. The game promises to be a survival title focused on a singular world, but Murray claimed it would be more ambitious than No Man's Sky. The developer tried to allay fears that Light No Fire would negatively impact work on No Man’s Sky by noting in his aforementioned blog post that Worlds Part 1 was named as such because even more updates would arrive in the future.
The most recent title Hello Games shipped was The Last Campfire, a puzzle adventure game released in late 2020. Despite being a smaller project compared to No Man's Sky in terms of scope and scale, The Last Campfire was widely praised by critics at launch, and it currently holds an Overwhelmingly Positive overall rating on Steam.
No Man's Sky
- Released
- August 9, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
Lose yourself in a vast sci-fi odyssey as you explore a near-infinite, procedurally generated universe. Set out from the edge of the Euclid galaxy and carve out your own interstellar existence in a vast universe teeming with life, danger and near-endless mystery. No Man's Sky is a hugely-ambitious, heavily-stylised, sci-fi adventure that spans entire galaxies all brought to life with procedural generation. Travel through an endless array of increasingly diverse and dangerous star systems, prospecting for rare materials, trading with alien life, populate planets and searching for clues to the meaning of the universe's mysterious existence. How you survive is up to you. Assemble entire fleets of dreadnought-class freighters and tear across the universe; build sprawling habitable bases across planet surfaces, beneath the ground or under the ocean; buy and upgrade your own weapons and star ships and do battle with outlaw space pirates, hostile alien fauna or the mysterious sentinel fleets. The universe is yours to explore - trillions upon trillions of planets, waiting to be discovered.
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Fantasy Violence, Animated Blood
- Developer(s)
- Hello Games
- Publisher(s)
- Hello Games
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Nintendo Switch 2
