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Eight years after its rocky birth, No Man’s Sky at final hits “Very Sure” critiques threshold on Steam

No Man’s Sky Reaches New Heights: Achieving ‘Very Positive’ Reviews on Steam After Eight Years of Evolution

By on November 28, 2024 0 33 Views

Hello there, you fool, I adore you.



Image credit: Hello Games

No Man’s Sky did not take off to the most seamless of beginnings, but eight years following its contentious launch, Hello Games’ exploratory sandbox simulation has achieved a significant milestone, finally earning enough positive player reviews on Steam to elevate its overall rating to “Very Positive”.

When No Man’s Sky debuted back in August 2016, player feedback was so negative that it quickly found itself condemned with an “Overwhelming Negative” rating on Steam. It required two years and multiple substantial updates for No Man’s Sky to gather enough positive reviews to shift its average to “Mixed”, and another three years beyond that to achieve an all-time user review average of “Mostly Positive” in 2021.

As Hello Games’ Tim Woodley noted at the time, “Each percentage point becomes increasingly challenging to secure as you ascend the ratings. Transitioning from 20 percent positive to 21 percent positive may require just a few hundred positive reviews, whereas moving from 69 percent to 70 percent needed 10,000 positive reviews. This is why it’s so uncommon for games to alter their All-Time rating and why we assumed it might never happen.”

This year’s major No Man’s Sky update revamped world features. Watch on YouTube

Another three years – and a total of 35 free content updates – later, No Man’s Sky has finally accomplished the seemingly impossible, transforming its initial “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating into “Very Positive”. This means that 80 percent of its 245,857 Steam reviews are favorable – which translates to 196,686 thumbs up against 49,171 thumbs down. Addressing this achievement, studio head Sean Murray stated, “Wow you all – it happened. ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have no idea what this signifies to us.”

No Man’s Sky’s next objective, then, will be to strive for entry into the exclusive “Overwhelmingly Positive” tier shared by titles like Sekiro, Persona 5, Baldur’s Gate 3, Stardew Valley, Hades, Dead Cells, the Silent Hill 2 remake, and Half-Life: Alyx. This is a considerably tougher target, however, requiring 95 percent of lifetime reviews to be positive. In other words, assuming No Man’s Sky doesn’t receive a single negative review from this moment on, it will need a total of 983,420 positive reviews – that’s 786,734 more than it currently has. At which point the actual universe will be 16 minutes away from annihilation.

Regardless, the transition to “Very Positive” is still an incredible accomplishment, and a testament to the remarkable efforts Hello Games has put into its simulation over the past eight years. No Man’s Sky’s latest update launched earlier this month, featuring cross-save support, PlayStation 5 Pro enhancements, and the return of Mass Effect’s Normandy. This marks the sixth significant update this year, following October’s eerie The Cursed (which, among other features, added flying saucer ships for players), while upcoming 2024 additions have included fishing, and revamped areas.

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