Controversy and problems are nothing new to Hello Games since the launch of their space game No Man's Sky. Between confusion over multiplayer, pc launch issues, data mining, and more there's been plenty to talk about since the release last week.

The most recent controversy, however, has nothing to do with any of those. Instead, it begins with a recent interview Sean Murray had with Red Bull, where he stated unequivocally, "there will be no paid DLC, just patches". In fact, to ensure context, here is the whole quote from that part:

"We do want to add a ton of features, like we've just discussed: Freighters, bases, these type of things. But we want to do it for free. You've paid for the game, so you should get this stuff without paying even more money. So no, there will be no paid DLC, just patches." - Sean Murray

That seems rather clear, that the game would be supported in a Terraria like manner, where the game has no expansions but instead relies on continuing sales to keep updates. While it's not a sustainable model necessarily for a big studio, for a smaller one it may very well be for a period of time. That is especially so when you consider that No Man's Sky opening week has been spectacular for an indie title. On PC, we still lack detailed numbers for opening day sales until tomorrow sometime when Steam Spy's stats sure up, but the concurrent player base peak was over 212k. To give some perception, here is the list of top all-time peak games on Steam, sorted by all-time peak concurrent users, wherein No Man's Sky ranks 5th.

Dota 2 - Peak: 1 295 114 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Peak: 854 801 Fallout 4 - Peak: 472 962 Grand Theft Auto 5 - Peak: 364 548 No Man's Sky - Peak: 212 613

There is no release this year on PC that has been hotter on Steam. Titles like XCOM 2, DOOM, Stardew Valley and more have only a fraction of the concurrent player base peak that No Man's Sky hit at launch. On PlayStation 4 numbers are a bit murkier, but we do know for the UK retail market on PlayStation 4, it had the second biggest opening for the system, behind only Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

However, despite all the indicators pointing to a large opening sales weekend, it took only days for Murray to back away and state that there may indeed be Paid DLC in the future for No Man's Sky. In an interview with the Daily Star, after saying that they plan on bringing a lot of new content and features to the game continuously, he refused to rule out paid DLC in the future.

He explained, "Maybe in the future there’s some reason why we just couldn’t possibly afford to do a certain feature without charging for it" to them regarding the topic, and said that he was "perhaps naive" to suggest it would be nothing but free updates post-launch.

What do you think about No Man's Sky player size? What about this whole situation regarding the future of the game? What would you like to see added? Share your thoughts in the comments below!