Hello Games’ Sean Murray shared No Man’s Sky’s upcoming COSMOS update and that their upcoming game, Light No Fire, is in the works.
No Man’s Sky was in a similar vein to Cyberpunk 2077, releasing poorly but gradually gaining the player base’s trust back with updates. With the game’s 10-year anniversary in full swing, Hello Games’ co-founder and CEO Sean Murray wrote an open letter to players—thanking them for the support over the last ten years. Some of the key highlights of the letter were that the next COSMOS update details will be coming soon, and that they are still “busy cooking” their next game, Light No Fire. A new 10th anniversary trailer went out, highlighting the last ten years of the game.
The action-adventure space survival game was released on PlayStation 4 on August 9th in North America and August 10th in Europe. Over the years, No Man’s Sky was eventually released on PC, XBOX One, XBOX Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. Back in the game’s 2016 launch, the reviews were negative, then mixed, and slowly changed to very positive over a long span of time. The driving factor of regaining player trust was Hello Games’ continuous free content updates.
Murray’s open letter highlighted how they were “around 40 major updates to date.” No Man’s Sky won best evolving game at The Game Awards and BAFTA last year, and rightfully so. “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,” Murray wrote.
One interesting detail in Murray’s letter was when he stated that “all these years later players have explored less than 1% of the planets in No Man’s Sky.” This is a crazy statement knowing that “tens of millions of Travellers have spent hundreds of millions of hours exploring” the game. But this makes sense since there are allegedly 18 quintillion planets in the game (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets). Hello Games told IGN “it would take 585 billion years to see them all.”
While there were no specific teases or details on the COSMOS update or the upcoming game Light No Fire, it is a good sign that some traction is building at Hello Games. A new No Man’s Sky update is a perfect way to celebrate the milestone. So far, we know Light No Fire is about adventure, building, survival and exploration together, set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth. The last details we learned about the game were from the reveal back at The Game Awards in 2023.
Here is Murray’s open letter to No Man’s Sky fans:
“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 Nintendo 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
