Hello Games have released a new patch, version 1.77 to introduce a new Community Mission, new collectible items and several bug fixes. Unlike previous Community Missions this one is scheduled to last 28 days, right through the Christmas and New Year holidays. Given the length of this Community Mission it’s likely that this will be the last update this year. Hopefully the staff at Hello Games will get some much-deserved time to relax with their loved ones over the holidays.

2018 has certainly been a monumental year for No Man’s Sky. For the first six months of this year the community spent a great deal of time playing through the second season of the Waking Titan ARG while Hello Games quietly worked on the biggest update since launch; No Man’s Sky: NEXT.

NEXT was released in late July 2018 and received generally high praise from the players. NEXT also thrust Hello Games back into the spotlight of the wider gaming community by introducing key features like multiplayer, better base building and the Xbox console release. The favorable response to the NEXT update was so profound that it finally tipped the the lifetime reviews on Steam from “Mostly Negative” to “Mixed”!

Yet the story doesn’t end there. After acknowledging that their silence and lack of communication was a mistake, Hello Games have taken proactive steps to improve their public relations by publishing more frequent content updates and engaging on social media. Since NEXT launched they have published two other significant updates, The Abyss and Visions, both of which address key gameplay issues requested by players.

With each new patch Hello Games always mentions how they are still planning and working on even more updates in the future. Needless to say, Sean Murray and the team at Hello Games are dedicated to this game. It’s clearly a labor of love for them. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and marvel at what they have been able to accomplish. In my opinion it takes some extremely talented developers to pull off a triple-A quality game like No Man’s Sky with the limited resources of a small indie studio. If 2018 is any indication of the future direction of No Man’s Sky I can’t wait to see what Hello Games have in store for 2019!