It blew our minds, too. Before No Man s Sky had even arrived on PC, two players on the PS4 version wound up in the same star system, contacted one another over chat, and attempted to meet, first in a space station and then planetside while both livestreaming the game. The result was a crushing disappointment for them and everyone watching: the two players couldn t actually see one another despite being in the same place at the same time in No Man s Sky s shared universe.

More disappointing: this happened on the day the game was released, and over a month later we still don t have a clear answer as to why. In such a massive universe, the chances of two players finding each other was supposed to be nearly zero, yet there were also supposed to be systems in place to handle it if it ever occurred. So, what s the deal? How did this thing that was never supposed to happen happen, and it having happened, why did nothing happen? Was it a server problem? A feature that wasn t working properly? Or was the feature simply not included to begin with?

We still don t know. Sean Murray (who tweets under @nomanssky, unusual in that it s both his personal account and the game s official one) tweeted a few more times in response but other than vague mentions of easter eggs and unexpected player counts (it was the biggest Steam launch of the year), there were no concrete explanations. This fits with No Man s Sky s brief history in general. As the days and weeks since launch passed, more questions mounted about the game s features and issues but few official answers have been given. And, for over a month now, Sean Murray has been completely silent, while the Hello Games Twitter account hasn t made a peep since August 27.

Space stationary

Until about a week ago, I d been playing No Man s Sky every single day. My review wasn t particularly sparkling: I found it repetitive, I thought many of its systems and menus were poorly designed, and while its procedural generation produced some lovely sights I generally found the planets and alien creatures underwhelming. Yet I continued to play for at least an hour each day. I d been trying to find another player, to make my own attempt at meeting someone, to answer that unanswered question for myself.

In a way, the search for other players was more enjoyable than anything else I d done in that it gave me some purpose in an otherwise aimless trip through the galaxy, and the first time I detected another player s discovery in my own game felt like a bigger discovery than any awkwardly lurching alien dinosaur or stationary animatronic NPC I d come across. I landed on the same planet the other player had been on, walked the same turf they had sprinted over, noted that they had scanned three different species of creature while they were there. They seemed to have been in a hurry: they hadn t visited the other three planets in the system, and hadn t renamed any of their discoveries before moving on. I friended them on Steam and invited them to join a new Steam Community group I created in case they wanted to respond. They never did.

For a week I continued searching, steadily plunging closer to the center of the galaxy, scanning for new discoveries each time I dropped out of warp. Over that week I wound up stumbling upon the discoveries of four players in total planets they d visited, animals they d scanned and one player I contacted over Steam actually responded to my message, though only days after I d sent it. I d moved well past that system by then, and I mulled over warping all the way back or moving on. The decision was taken from my hands when first a glitch caused my game to crash any time I opened the galaxy map, which essentially imprisoned me in the system I was in for a full week, and second a patch killed my connection to No Man s Sky s servers for another five days, meaning I couldn t scan for other players at all.

There was no announcement from Hello Games, like We know online services are down and we re working on it. There was nothing at all. My irritation wasn t that there were bugs every game has them but that I didn t know if Hello knew about them, or was trying to fix them, or when fixes could be expected. Loading up the game faithfully each and every day to see for myself if it had been fixed began to irritate me. Why am I spending my time to check on No Man s Sky if Hello Games isn t even taking a moment to tweet or write a forum post about it?

Black holes

A developer has a responsibility to its fans, and plenty of tools to reach them: Twitter, forums, and even in-game announcements allow constant, and direct communication between players and developers. At the same time, despite a marketing partnership with Sony, Hello Games is a small team of just over a dozen people which doesn t leave a lot of manpower to respond to questions and complaints or engage in chats on forums. (The tech support ticket I submitted on August 19, for the issue that had me trapped in a single solar system, wasn t answered until September 6.) Lack of time, lack of staff, and an eager press (hi there) ready to pounce on any hint of a story there are several legit reasons why Hello Games and Sean Murray are being cautious about what they say publicly.

Complete silence, however, goes against the precedent for modern games, and other small development teams, like Subnautica creator Unknown Worlds, manage weekly news posts to keep its community informed. Even the sole maker of Stardew Valley has a separate account for handling complaints and questions with customers. When developers are silent, it allows outspoken players to influence the narrative about what's happening, as this Reddit thread in particular showed, with players digging through the past, pulling up interview quotes and pre-release footage in an attempt to prove No Man s Sky was marketed and sold under false pretenses. Amid silence, disappointment and confusion can quickly turn to frustration and anger.

In the meantime, work continues. The PS4 version recently received patch 1.09, which, like 1.08 before it, contained no official patch notes, leaving players to once again carry the burden of answering their own questions about what has been fixed, changed, or added. I get that there are some reasons for Hello to be careful of what it says, but when you won t even quickly type up a list of patch notes? That s not being cautious, that s being completely negligent of your community. Take an interview (probably not with me). Do an AMA. Tweet something. Tweet anything. It s time to start talking again, while there s still a community to listen.

President of Sony's Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, said he understands the complaints being leveled at Hello Games' Sean Murray over the shaky launch and ongoing issues of the procedural space exploration game No Man's Sky. "I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting," Yoshida told Eurogamer at the Tokyo Game Show, "because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one."

"It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer," Yoshida said.

It's interesting to hear that coming from Sony. While Hello Games both developed and published No Man's Sky, Sony's partnership with the developer was to provide promotional and marketing assistance. While it may be fair for Yoshida to call out Murray for making promises he couldn't keep, it's also worth remembering that a vice-president at Sony once described No Man's Sky as "potentially one of the biggest games in the history of our industry" according to this May article in The New Yorker.

With all of the hype fallout, it's perhaps not surprising that Murray has largely gone silent of late. Hello Games' Twitter account hasn't posted anything since August 27, and Murray's personal account has been quiet for nearly an entire month. The last post on the official site, regarding patch 1.08, was from September 2, though SteamDB shows updates to the experimental branch and internal servers within the past day.

Yoshida made some positive statements about the game as well, saying he "really enjoyed" No Man's Sky and that he was "looking forward to continuing to play the game."

Thanks, Eurogamer.

This week on the Mod Roundup, the dormant and mysterious portal structures in No Man's Sky have finally been given some interactivity. Meanwhile, Nvidia's lighting mod for Fallout 4 turns out to provide a worthwhile and creepy exploration of a mysterious vault, and a mod for Skyrim adds tons of NPC dialogue and greater control over your followers.

Here are the most promising mods we've seen this week.

Portals, for No Man's Sky

Download link

The purpose and function of portal stones is one of No Man's Sky's greater mysteries, though that mystery may have morphed from "What do portals do?" to "Do portals do anything at all?" in recent days. No amount of player experimentation has managed to activate one (yet) so one modder decided to activate them himself by tinkering with game files. Now you can interact with portals, which will ask you lore-based questions and reward you with an Atlas stone. You can also apparently use them as black hole warp jumps upon returning to your ship.

Vault 1080, for Fallout 4

Download link

This mod was created by Nvidia to show off their volumetric lighting effects, and that it does, though not with a heck of a lot of subtlety. On the other hand, it's still an enjoyable extra hour of play, as you explore a legitimately creepy new (well, old, really) vault filled with monsters and a little bit of additional story in the form of terminal diaries and logs. Come for the god rays, but stay for the ghouls.

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul

Download link

In addition to restoring lines of dialogue to Skyrim's NPCs (and creating new ones by editing multiple lines together), it makes dialogue more logical, so if your spouse is a follower they won't speak to you as a generic follower would, and NPCs who don't like you will hurl more insults and possibly even completely ignore you. This also mod has a host of NPC management features, like being able to make nearly any voiced NPC a follower, and allowing you to shush those those followers who are a bit too chatty.

Hello Games has released the largest set of fixes and tweaks so far for its galactic exploration game No Man's Sky. The update includes fixes to crash bugs, issues that left players stuck in the world, and corrupt save games, plus numerous gameplay tweaks and improvements, and a handful of PC-specific updates as well.

One particularly interesting fix corrects a bug that could cause some corrupt save games to not be loaded. Hello didn't specify how that would impact the game, but it's possible that it could be related to complaints last week that player discoveries in No Man's Sky were being deleted. The studio still hasn't responded to our inquiries about that specific issue (and I'm starting to think it's not going to) but fact that at least one Redditor pointed to "corruption" as a possible cause for the disappearances suggests, to me at least, that there may be a connection.

Over the last few weeks since No Man s Sky released we ve been inundated with feedback and discussion about No Man s Sky. No matter what feedback you gave us, you have been heard and we are listening carefully. Thank you, Hello Games wrote in the latest development update. What matters now, as always, is what we do rather than what we say. We re developers, and our focus is first on resolving any issues people have with the game as it is, then on future free updates which will improve, expand and build on the No Man s Sky universe.

The full list of fixes in the 1.07 patch is available on Steam.

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My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

View full-sized image

My plan to explore the universe in No Man's Sky was to travel around the world aimlessly and keep a "photo journal" along the way. My goal wasn't to reach the center of the galaxy, but rather to try and find new and unique worlds that nobody has ever visited before. Nobody except for the aliens that were already there, of course. If there is anything I find compelling about No Man's Sky, it's the feeling of pulling the lever on a slot machine and hoping you wind up with an interesting world to explore and catalog. That unpredictability was the only thing I was able to cling to after 5 hours.

Many of my screenshots were captured before the experimental build that fixed some of the aliasing issues I was experiencing early on. Even though I captured these images at ~6K resolutions, they still exhibit some aliasing after downsampling to 4K.

To fit in our gallery system, each thumbnail had to be cropped from its beautiful ultrawide aspect ratio. Click the link above to see the full image. You can also click here to download a zip file of the entire gallery at 4K resolution.

Over the weekend, a Reddit post went up claiming that Steam was offering refunds for No Man s Sky regardless of playtime. It quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the most upvoted posts on the entire site, and while it s not a lie it is possible to get a refund for No Man s Sky whether you ve played one hour or 40 the headline is misleading players. Valve has not made an exception to its automatic refund policy for No Man s Sky, and because of the number of players looking for one, Valve dropped a PSA on the NMS store page to clear the air.

As their policy states, Valve will automatically refund any game for any reason only if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. Because of the Reddit thread, a growing contingent of players are under the impression that No Man s Sky is an exception to the two-hour rule, generally based on claims of false advertising and technical issues with the port. This is not the case. No Man s Sky is not eligible for automatic refunds beyond two hours in, but, like every Steam game, you can still appeal for a refund regardless of playtime.It seems because of the concerted effort in a thread with over 5,000 upvotes and how-to articles from multiple publications and YouTubers that some players have found success in their refund appeals but again, this is only because of their direct appeals to customer service, not a wider exemption. Right now, it's unclear how many refunds have been issued, and we may never know. But based on the massive success of NMS s launch, it s likely the percentage of players that refund the game won t make much of a dent in its long term performance. The confusion continues to poke at the flexibility of Steam s refund policy. In a game as expansive and as heavily marketed as No Man s Sky, how much playtime is needed to know a refund is necessary? Games are fluid, composed by teams of varying size, with varying budgets, and a wide variety of artistic intent. How much of the burden is on the development team for making a game that aligns with player expectations, and how much is on the player for keeping their expectations in check? If you ask me, the answer for players is simple. Don t pre-order games. You can t always trust marketing, but you also can t always trust your imagination.

This week on the Mod Roundup, a handful of mods for No Man's Sky to make alien planets a bit more imposing. By increasing the size of plants, trees, rocks, and creatures, exploration will feel a bit more daunting and wondrous. Plus, you'll also get a boost to your inventory size and be able to stack previously unstackable items.

Keep in mind that modding No Man's Sky is a relatively new development, and we can't say what might happen to your saved games should a mod or update mess with the functionality of the game. Mod with caution!

Here are the most promising mods we've seen this week.

Big Things

Download link

Wandering No Man's Sky's alien worlds can be a perfectly pleasant experience, but there's little to find that will make you feel particularly small and insignificant, which is where a lot of the wonder of space travel lies. Succinctly titled, Big Things makes things big. Clusters of trees will now feel more like forests, plants and rocks will loom, and even the resource crystals you gather will seem imposing. There are naturally some clipping issues, and your FPS may take a hit while the game generates these oversized elements.

Bigger Creatures

Download link

We were all looking forward to finding some truly massive alien beasts in No Man's Sky, and while there are definitely some large creatures roaming the surface of some planets, I daresay I haven't found anything truly daunting yet. This mod tweaks the size of alien critters in a few different ways. There's a version to make the chances of finding large creatures more common, and one that makes the size of creatures generally larger. There's also a version to make every creature huge, but I imagine that might get dull pretty quickly.

Item Stacking

Download link

There's one more thing that needs to get bigger in No Man's Sky: your inventory. It doesn't make much sense that you can hold tons of plutonium in one pocket yet only a single fascination bead on another. This mod allows you to stack specialty items like Gek charms and venom sacs, and also increases the size of resource stacks, letting you spend less time fiddling around in your backpack and more time exploring.

Looking for more? Check out our list of the best No Man's Sky mods so far.

Update: Dark_Nexis emailed to say that he was able to correct the problem by reinstalling and reloading the game and waiting. "I don't know what happened but all the discoveries re-appeared on my starting planet," he wrote in an update to his original post. "It seems like a server bugs, like it takes a while for your old discoveries to re-download... It seems a little bugged where you get further and further away from your starting point [and] you can't see your old discoveries even when you find your way back. It's like the server lags behind big time and takes a while to find the old information. "

In the email, he said the problem may have been exacerbated by the fact that he was really far from home when he decided to turn around.

"It seems like the server just lags behind and maybe hides older discoveries to help with loading in the star systems/discoveries menu," he wrote. "I was only about 40k away from the center when I decided to turn around and go back. I jumped 92 times and went through a lot of black holes so it took me a long time to get back so the server probably just had to find that old data and reload it in my game."

Other players haven't reported similar resolutions yet, but hopefully Dark_Nexis is right and this was a simple server glitch, although that does lead to the obvious question of what happens when those servers go away for good. I'm still waiting to hear from Hello Games, and I'll update again when I do.

Original story:

No Man's Sky is all about exploration and discovery. So you can imagine how frustrating it would be to learn that all the effort you put into cataloging the flora and fauna you've run across on your intergalactic journey was for naught. Yet that seems to be what's happening, according to this Reddit thread, where multiple users are claiming that the names they'd given to plants and animals have been wiped, and their discoveries reset.

One redditor, by the name of Dark_Nexis, said that when he returned to his home planet after approaching the center of the galaxy, he found that the system and planet names were still in place, but everything else was wiped. The names I gave them are gone and reset like I never discovered them, they're still there just not discovered when I did discover them before I left my starting system, he wrote. Only thing still named is the planet and system names.

Another user, Ultrasilvanus, claimed a similar experience. Yesterday I browsed my list of discoveries, and went all the way to my starting planet. The system and all the planets I've ever been to are clearly marked as being discovered by me, the planets list 100% completion for animal scans but I can't see any animal or plant in the gallery and all of them appear as ???????. he wrote. He found a world that was starting to be 'corrupted', made a note of the checkpoints and animals he'd discovered, then went about his usual spacefaring business.

The next day, browsed the list again. The planet was wiped clean and so were a couple more, he wrote. Just to be clear enough, discoveries are being erased in chronological order. First system, second system and so on. It's not random. It's a pattern, starting from your very first discoveries.

A third redditor, Homesickalienz, said essentially the same thing, writing, Found about 15 different save points and named them all. Only 6 show up in the list. When I find a new one the last one gets booted.

Several users have said that the disappearing discoveries could be the result of trouble uploading data to the remote servers, which seems entirely plausible. But keeping track of an endless stream of discovered plant and wildlife across literally multiple quintillions of digital worlds would be a huge task, and so naturally there are also suggestions that Hello Games may have taken a shortcut or two, and invalidated the efforts of its players in the process.

I've reached out to Hello Games to ask whether these problems are the reuslt of server glitches, an intentional design choice, or something else entirely, and will update if and when I receive a reply. In the meantime, if you've run into anything like this yourself, let us know about it in the comments.

For the moment No Man's Sky holds the title for the biggest launch on Steam of 2016. 212,620 people were playing it simultaneously on launch day, according to Steam Stats, putting it far ahead of everything else to come out this year. But it's subsequently suffered a tremendous fall-off, shedding 88 percent of its concurrent user count in less than two weeks. That sounds like a lot, but is it?

If you look at this Reddit discussion of No Man's Sky's decline, you'll see plenty of eager grave dancing. One poster notes that even the infamous bomb Aliens: Colonial Marines only saw a concurrent user loss of 85 percent over its first month of release. "The only way to keep people playing at this point is to make it free," another poster said, claiming that he was bored after a single day; a third, riffing on the apparently-failed promise of being able to meet other players in space, added, "Players sure as heck aren't going to be running into each other now."

SteamSpy and SteamDB help us take a closer look at the data: No Man's Sky peak concurrent player count on August 11 was 212,604; on August 22, it was 25,689. Hourly concurrent players are similarly down, from a high of 127,224 on August 14 to 22,852 on August 23. That's a hell of a drop, but it comes with some caveats: It doesn't reflect the total population of the game but rather the number of people playing it simultaneously, and that measurement of intensity of interest is bound to drop as a game's newness wears off and players become less likely to sink 14 hours at a time into it.

But compared to other, better-received recent releases, NMS may not be cratering as badly as it appears. Far Cry Primal, for instance, saw its peak player count slide 82 percent over its first month of release; Fallout 4 dropped by 74 percent; Doom fell by 85 percent; Battleborn slid by 82 percent; Stellaris dropped by 82 percent; even The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which we recently placed atop our Top 100 Games list, saw its peak player count slide by 71 percent during its first month of release. The hugely popular Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain slipped by an almost identical amount. One notable exception is Stardew Valley, which saw its peak user count slip by just 30 percent over its first month.

So although No Man's Sky has tailed off faster than other big games, it's not too far outside the normal decay that recent blockbusters seem to experience. Arguably it's a larger drop in concurrent players than you'd expect for a game that promised virtually endless hours of open-ended exploration 18 quintillion planets and all that. A single-player shooter with a ten-hour campaign is obviously going to see a more precipitous drop in its peak player count than an open-world RPG with 127 side quests waiting to be cleaned up. And that really speaks to what we found in our review: 45 hours of gameplay yielded 200 planets, 500 new species, and a dearth of interesting stories. When the core of your game is discovery, you'd better have some cool stuff to discover.

It's arguable that the huge launch of No Man's Sky made the corresponding fall-off inevitable, and it's also worth bearing in mind that none of this touches on the PS4 version of the game. But as a case study in hype, expectations, and disappointment, I have no doubt that we'll be talking about No Man's Sky, and its fallout, for a long time to come.

No Man s Sky has been out for over a week now and it s been met with a mixed critical reception, but no matter how monotonous it can be, one thing is certain: I volunteered to rank all the planets for some reason. We don t want you wasting a second on a bland purple sphere pockmarked yet again with two-legged goat creatures and sparse plutonium deposits, so really, I m doing a good thing. Yeah? Helping save time. It just might take awhile to get to the good ones.These are the worst planets of the bunch, and they represent the most irritating and bland aspects of the procedural generation in No Man's Sky. Stay tuned for part two, where we ll address the remaining 18,446,744,073,709,551,606.

The one with gross nonsensical terrain

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 Name: MEAT CUBENotable landmarks: meat, cubes, trauma

Murder your eyes on the worst planet in all of No Man s Sky. From a distance its red crust appears a celestial menace, a Kinder egg that contains hell. I imagine jagged mountain ranges and harsh, arid environments home to only the most austere life forms but flying closer unveils a landscape that looks like a super volcano immolated a colossal mess of Chef Boyardee.

MEAT CUBE highlights the jarring byproducts of procedural generation. The tubes and cubes can function as weird alien landmarks in moderation, but spread across an entire planet (and MEAT CUBE is far from alone) they look artificial and overdone. I don t feel wonder looking at MEAT CUBE, only disgust. MEAT CUBE is a dark mirror held up to procedural generation, a warning against what we re capable of when we play God or make complex Excel spreadsheets. Knowing we re all made of stardust is not a comfort. This is abstract body horror, maximized, and it just looks silly.

The one with a bogus atmosphere

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,614Name: ChadNotable landmarks: big muscles, weak will, soft heart

When I first met Chad, it put on a show of dominance. I m not trying to be alpha in space (the sun is a tryhard), so after showing off a dirty outer crust split by jagged red lines of magma, I lowered my gaze. Basic astronomy.

But after orbiting Chad a few times, I worked up the courage to enter its atmosphere. What I found below surprised me:

Beneath an imposing atmospheric layer, Chad hides a lush, verdant body populated with some of the most gorgeous, kind mega-deer I ve ever seen. Chad is soft. Chad is good. Chad just doesn t know it no one will ever know it, they'll just fly right on by, tired of the bleak ones. Chad is a tragedy and low-ranking planet because it's deceptive, hiding an interesting biosphere beneath an ugly atmosphere. I'm not sure if the lighting is playing trick or if it's literally a case of mismatched textures in the algorithm. Either way, it was jarring to go from Hell Planet to the Garden of Eden in the space of a few seconds.

The one that looks like a '90s Trapper Keeper

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,613 Name: Lisa Frank, MFANotable landmarks: the color pink and also the color purple

Daytime was so saturated with neon I could only stomach taking photos at night. Lisa Frank, MFA's problem is shared among most of the planets: the colors feel slapdash and implausible, a quick swap between variables to make a scene pop. Occasionally, it can look great, directly lifted from a sci-fi book cover, which was an early guiding principle for Hello Games. Play more than a few hours though, and it starts to feel like the algorithm is coloring by numbers. A purple ground with pink highlights and turquoise plants works in terms of color theory, but with enough time, it looks silly and turns into an obviously superficial variable.

That you can t craft a sequined denim vest on this planet is also a major disappointment.

The one with nothing going on

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,612Name: Son of ChadNotable landmarks: none

Forced to grow up against the commanding orbit of Chad, Son of Chad, a lowly Satellite moon doesn't have much going on. I tried to tweet at popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson with a few questions about Son of Chad s cracking surface, patchy vegetation, and poor retrogrades to no avail it's a moon with no recourse. Bummer.

But I suppose that as a moon, Son of Chad does the trick: a rocky grey landscape, no atmosphere, an abundance of every mineral I have and none I need. It looks like Arizona got sucked into space. Moons also tend to be lacking in color and energy, and Son of Chad is no different. I suppose it's realistic, but it's boring up against its more vibrant cousins.

The one that I married

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,610Name: We Need To Talk SharonNotable landmarks: currency, codependence

When I first skirted the surface of this planet, two things came to mind: donuts by way of '90s Christian sing-a-long shows and marriage.Overall, there s not much going on here. The vistas aren t exactly pretty thanks to the garish open mouthed Os peeping out of the horizon. I imagine googly eyes on each and every one. And Vortex Cubes, while valuable, give the otherwise barren planet a thrift-mart vibe. I suppose this planet provides and easy way to make money, but beyond that? Just some really dopey rock structures. Like MEAT CUBE, bizarre shapes are pretty interesting in moderation, but once you realize they whole planet is dotted with them, everything starts to feel a bit too much like math.

The one with a lot of damn water

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,609Name: Microsoft PowerPointNotable landmarks: color gradient effects

There are a ton of planets covered in water. You hearing this, NASA? Water planets are really frustrating when you don't have a cool boat. If only your jetpack wasn't useless in it and your rebreathers didn't require a constant supply of minerals to stay useful. Water planets have a ton of unique wildlife and often hide potent mineral deposits in their depths you're just forced to move like a slug through it all and there's nothing you can do about it.

Like Chad, Microsoft PowerPoint also had a jarring atmospheric color change.

If there is a god in No Man's Sky, they really like Instagram filters.

Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty scene when you stand still. But Sentinels and predatory hamburger-faced dogs wouldn't stop trying to kill me, so I couldn't really soak it in. Emptying my multi-tool's battery takes them out with ease, which makes them more annoying than if they were a legitimate threat. They function as tiny mosquitoes whose sole purpose is to buzz 'survival game, survival game' into my ear every 30 seconds. Leave me in peace to stare at the orange stuff, please. Let book covers be book covers.

The one with the very bad birds

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,607Name: Four Beers DeepNotable landmarks: Nothing, apparently

Scanning flying creatures in No Man's Sky is a pain, so when I found Four Beers Deep, a flat, arid planet filled with fliers, I figured I'd bite the bullet and find them all. After far too many attempts to place the scanning reticle on the pixel-sized space that would initiate a bird scan, I finally got one. They were flying away, but once you start, distance typically doesn't matter. And it didn't, until they dissolved in front of my eyes. The scan finished, telling me everything I needed to know about this planet and any with a damn bird on it.

The one that might as well be Earth

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,605Name: EarthNotable landmarks: the green part

What's so good about earth, anyway? The deer don't even have floppy tentacles shooting out of their faces. No one's ever gleefully exclaimed that Nebraska's a blast to stand on. The United States is made up of flat farmland and treacherous mountain terrain that can sure look nice, but isn't always inherently fun to be in. And that's OK, it's just the way things are. Besides, we've thought up plenty of ways to entertain ourselves in the last couple centuries alone. Videogames, heard of 'em?

If you dig a little, anything on earth becomes interesting for its violent geological history, and while that's not really the case on this earthly approximation, taken at face value it is at least nice to look at. Just like on the real earth, green hills and a bluish sky are fine by me and the thousands of landscape painters throughout history who've given a great deal of attention to sheep, and what they're up to. The problem is that No Man's Sky doesn't give you much to deal with its approximation of endless cornfields. They can look nice in the right light, but there's nothing to enable and encourage appreciation. There's no button for turning off the HUD, no built-in camera, no surveying tools that reveal anything below the surface, and toxic weather or angry sentinels are always rearing to suckerpunch you out of any romantic meditative trance. Put away the poetry books and get back to mining, nerd.

The one that is Tom

Planet # 18,446,744,073,709,551,609Name: Tom MarksNotable landmarks: Handsome Man Mountain

To be fair, sometimes the procedural variables really do come together and make something memorable. But this planet isn t memorable in the greatest way. This is some real uncanny valley stuff. I don t like coming into the office anymore.

I'm sorry. I have deceived you. This is actually Tom's head. But really, where are the bizarre one-off planets and events in No Man's Sky? I can deal with a few MEAT CUBES and a series of Nebraskas if there's a chance I'll see something altogether different in a few more stops, be it Tom's skull or not. I know No Man's Sky is massive, but I would have figured we'd see less uniformity as time went on. There has to be something truly strange hiding in those 18 quintillion planets, right?