After Its Big Next Update, No Man's Sky Is One Of The Most Played Games On Steam

New Game Today:

When it first released in 2016, No Man's Sky was met with middling-to-good reviews (ours was positive but pointed out several missteps), but met with much anger from players who felt betrayed. Since then developer Hello Games has been adding content and features over the course of the last two years, the latest of which, the Next update, was the biggest. The work has paid off for the team, as players are now flocking back to the game.

Yesterday, Hello Games' Sean Murray tweeted the game had become "one of the most played games on PC, PS4, and Xbox," in the wake of the Next update, and said the playerbase is growing each day. He also included a screenshot of the top games page on Steam, which included No Man's Sky, which at the game had a 24-hour peak of over 60,000 players, making it the sixth overall game on the service.

https://twitter.com/NoMansSky/status/1022902205605707776

Although it's hard to find exact data for PSN and Xbox Live (on the latter's official "most played" page, No Man's Sky is currently absent), Steam does publish exact numbers for the concurrent playerbases of its games, however, and Murray's statement on the growing playerbase holds true. As of this writing, the game is sitting at a 24-hour peak of over 84,000 players on Steam.

To see what all the fuss about, check out our episode of New Gameplay Today on the game, as well as Javy Gwaltney's travelogue on the update.

 

While this number is likely to taper off (as is the case with any game launch or major update), it's a testament to both how popular the core idea behind No Man's Sky is, how substantial the updates Hello Games have made since launch are, and how skillful rebranding to accompany those updates can do for a game that at first felt lacking. Hopefully players won't be flocking to get refunds for it again (outside of GoG purchases, anyway).

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