No Man's Sky / Light No Fire

Today marks 10 years since No Man's Sky released on PS4, which is just as impressive as it is terrifying.

After a disaster of a launch, developer Hello Games righted the ship and then went above and beyond with an incredible decade of free support for the space explorer. There's still more to come, as Sean Murray reveals in a blog post marking today's anniversary.

He mentions a COSMOS update, which I believe will be the 44th content update since No Man's Sky came out. Amazing support, that.

Interestingly, over two and a half years since later since its reveal, Murray also makes a passing comment on Light No Fire, the next title from Hello Games. Absolutely nothing has been seen of the project since its unveiling at The Game Awards in 2023, but Murray states the team is "busy cooking" it in the background.

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Light No Fire takes the No Man's Sky concept and applies it to a single planet, where you will meet other real-life players and make your own discoveries out in a procedurally generated open world.

"A truly open world, with no boundaries at a scale never attempted before. A massively varied and dense planet filled with immersive biomes, unique enemies and valuable resources to discover," the game description teases. "Carve a life together. Meet players from across the globe, build a life, explore and survive together. Construct persistent buildings and communities, or strike out alone to discover the world for others."

Here is Sean Murray's full letter to mark 10 years of No Man's Sky:

Hello!

I feel surprisingly emotional today. Ten years ago, on 9th August 2016, travellers across the universe set foot on their first alien planet in No Man’s Sky.

Perhaps you were there ten years ago, or maybe you joined later. It’s very cool to me that all around the universe, other Travellers have woken up on countless other planets, light years apart from each other. They took their first steps on their first planet and brought a new unexplored universe into existence together.

Since then millions of players have made No Man’s Sky their home, created insane bases, built communities, made friends, and built really creative custom ships.

For any game to reach its ten-year milestone is impressive and I think that is especially true for No Man’s Sky. It’s really a testament to the passion of the team here and of the players for the game, that this year we’ve seen our highest player numbers since launch, and won a TGA and BAFTA for best evolving game.

Over the last decade, the No Man’s Sky players have joined us in another type of journey as we grew, expanded and deepened what No Man’s Sky could be. With now 40 major updates, all free, we have expanded our sandbox universe with base-building, exocraft, settlements, mechs, pets, living ships, expeditions and rebuilt the universe several times over. Support for Switch, XBox, VR, PSVR, Switch 2, PS5, XBX and more has been added along the way. In fact No Man’s Sky is supported on about as many platforms as there are team members!

It became a bit of a meme at the time, me holding up the gold master disc of No Man’s Sky but I’m proud to say that most of the people in that photo are still at Hello. The No Man’s Sky team has evolved over that period of course, but it is not really that much bigger.

Since then tens of millions of Travellers have spent hundreds of millions of hours exploring and sharing their discoveries and the universe is more vibrant now than it ever has been. Voyagers released last year saw more players than we’ve had since launch… and still, all these years later players have explored less than 1% of the planets in No Man’s Sky.

In a similar way our small team feels we have a lot left to explore in what No Man’s Sky can be. In the background we are busy cooking on our next game Light No Fire, and big things for the future of No Man’s Sky, with the tease of our upcoming update titled “COSMOS”. More will follow!

I consider myself exceedingly lucky to work with the people I do, on a game I love with one of the nicest communities in video games. If you’re reading this, then it is because you have shown us a kindness over that period. Big or small that helps Hello Games do what we do. For that I am truly grateful.

Thank you so much,

Sean