The team of developers at Hello Games LTD, the company responsible for creating the widely-expected space exploration open world game ‘No Man’s Sky,’ published a short article on their official blog yesterday announcing the release of a new update for the title.
Hello Games is a Britain-based company currently headquartered in Guildford, Surrey, near central London. ‘No Man’s Sky,’ arguably their most famous title, did not receive the praise expected to come with its earlier hype.
‘No Man’s Sky,’ arguably their most famous title, did not receive the praise expected to come with its earlier hype.
Players and tech reviewers have theorized the game’s mostly lukewarm reception to alleged pressure from inside the company, which prompted developers to release NMS earlier than expected and ended up publishing an incomplete game.
Hallo Games called the new version the ‘Foundation Update’
The team of developers announced the new name for the incoming patch, which has no fixed date and will be released ‘this week’ (according to the article), will be the Foundation Update.
The name signals the addition of new tools for base building and also “the foundation for things to come,” they wrote.
Patch notes did not appear on the blog post, but developers promised they would release them soon. They worked on the Foundation Update for nine weeks.
“The discussion around No Man’s Sky since release has been intense and dramatic,” the article states. “We have been quiet, but we are listening and focusing on improving the game that our team loves and feels so passionately about.”
After two months of silence, questions about ‘No Man’s Sky’ remain
‘No Man’s Sky’ came out officially on August 9 for North America and the next day for Europe to a record number of sales and online players. A week later, however, developers reported and 81% drop in online playing and world building.
‘No Man’s Sky’ was sold through the Steam platform for the PlayStation 4 and Windows, but did not have more than 5,000 players at the end of September.
The advertising campaign promised a lot of things that did not make the final cut, and people were dissatisfied with the game.
The seemingly misleading ads even caused a legal investigation from the UK’s Advertising Standard Authority, something that ultimately led Steam to change its internal developer guidelines and regulations.
The game’s praised mainly came from what many critics considered to be an outstanding technical achievement regarding graphics and internal development, but this was not enough for reviewers to forget its seeming repetitiveness and lack of depth.
Source: Hello Games