Against all odds
Approximately 22 months ago,No Man’s Skywas left for dead. Hello Games’ magnum opus had an abysmal launch, as all the pre-release promises never lived up to the realities of this functionally-infinite universe. It was boring and tedious, and all the space in the world doesn’t matter if there’s nothing to do.
With this week’s release of theNo Man’s Sky‘sNextupdate, the game is working its way up the charts. It’s inSteam’s top 10 most-played titlesat the time of writing, with well over 60,000 concurrent players. It’s currently beating out long-tail mainstays likeTeam Fortress 2,ARK: Survival Evolved, andRocket League. People are playingNo Man’s Skyagain, and that’s kind of incredible when you consider that it felt like nearly everyone mentally sorted this game as an Ultra Disappointment at launch.
It’s an honest-to-goodness redemption tale, asNo Man’s Skyis finally the game that people wanted when it originally released. The statistics support its rocky history. According to thisGithyp chart,No Man’s Skypeaked at 212,321 concurrent PC players during its August 2016 launch. The numbers plummeted soon thereafter. The game struggled to break 2,000 concurrents nearly every month (save for August 2017 when theAtlas Risesupdate pushed 19,000 simultaneous players). It was a steep, steep cliff.
The longer you fall, the further you have to climb back up. Improbably,No Man’s Skyis relevant and popular again. CreatorSean Murray saysits “one of the most-played games in the world this week,” although we don’t have PlayStation 4 and Xbox One statistics to confirm that. We don’t really need them, though. The fact that it’s getting such a positive reception two years later is proof enough. It turns out that the center of theNo Man’s Skyuniverse is actually an alternate reality where everyone suddenly lovesNo Man’s Sky.
