'Holy s**t you guys—it happened': 8 years after a terrible launch, No Man's Sky has reached a Very Positive rating on Steam

No Man's Sky multi
(Image credit: Hello Games)

Cyberpunk 2077 is often held up as the greatest redemption arc in videogame history, but I think No Man's Sky has a legitimate claim on the crown too. More than eight years after it landed with an ugly thud on Steam—a "supernova of negative backlash and disappointment," as we put it at the time—Hello Games' sci-fi exploration epic has clawed its way up to a "very positive" rating on Steam.

The rating means that at least 80% of all user reviews of No Man's Sky are positive, and that's a far cry from the game's early days. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, this is what it looked like in August 2017, one year after No Man's Sky came out—positive reviews are coming in, but the overall rating is stuck in "mostly negative" thanks to the great, weighty mass of early negative reviews.

(Image credit: Steam (via the Wayback Machine))

That's a massive mountain to climb, but Hello Games stuck with it, releasing bug fixes and major updates alike that slowly but surely made the game into what players had expected from it since the very beginning. It took five years and 17 free, "game-changing" updates to hoist the game into a "mostly positive" overall rating, and earlier in 2024 the next step on the ladder came within view: Hello Games head Sean Murray said in April, "I never thought it possible, but guys we might hit 'Very Positive' (80%) one day," although he also cautioned that "mathematically each % point is much harder to gain than the last."

And yet, here we are. "Holy shit you guys—it happened," Murray wrote on X. "ALL REVIEWS: Very positive. Thank you thank you thank you. You have no idea what this means to us."

(Image credit: Sean Murray (Twitter))

It is, as we said earlier this year, "a great symbolic win" for Hello Games, but not really a game-changer in any practical sense. No Man's Sky is already a big sales success and widely regarded as an outstanding game: It's among the very few games to hold spots on our "worst launches" and "best games" lists at the same time. That Steam rating isn't going to have any real impact on the game's future fortunes, but symbols matter, and this is a big one.

The next step up in Steam's rating system, "Overwhelmingly Positive," requires at least 95% positive reviews, and that's likely going to be out of reach: By my extremely rough calculations, another 100,000 positive reviews—and no negatives—would nudge the rating up by five points, which would still leave it well shy of the mark. As Murray said, the math is tough. But even if that final number isn't attainable, this new milestone is a hell of an achievement by any measure.

Hello Games also kicked off Expeditions Redux today, a chance to replay (or play, if you missed them) the year's community expeditions "in a 'reduxed' form such that they can be completed and rewards unlocked with relative ease." The first, Omega, is live now and runs until December 11. And if you don't already have No Man's Sky in your library, it's on sale now for $24/£20/€24—60% off the regular price—in the 2024 Steam Autumn Sale.

TOPICS
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Read more
A gas giant planet in No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky is getting 'trillions of new planets,' some with oceans 'several kilometers deep,' plus explorable 'end-game' gas giants
overwatch 2 stadium mode
Overwatch 2 achieves the improbable, clawing back a 'Mixed' rating in recent Steam reviews after a well-received perks update
Stalker 2
It launched upside down and on fire, but busted and brilliant Stalker 2 has attracted 6 million players to the Zone in the last 3 months
Fallout 76 - a player in a vault suit gives a thumbs up
Fallout 76's former project lead says it's still his favourite game he worked on, but the initial reception was demoralising: 'I got yelled at in an Apple Store, I'll never forget'
Gary Oldman in Squadron 42
11 years and $750 million later, Star Citizen now has a new star system and MMO-scale server sizes
Crashing servers, flame wars, and a 60-day path to redemption—the utterly chaotic first year of Helldivers 2 has been a democratic doozy
Latest in Sim
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
A spacecraft flying near the sun in Elite: Dangerous
Elite Dangerous just implemented an entire system colonisation mechanic, in case you really want to get off this planet
Birds in a garden in Birdfull
This cosy birdwatching idle game has me leaving behind my binoculars and enjoying the hobby from the comfort of my desktop
Latest in News
Devil May Cry Netflix screenshots
We've just got a first look at Vergil in Netflix's upcoming Devil May Cry series alongside another key character from Devil May Cry 3
GTA 5 characters
GTA 5 publisher takes legal aim at account-selling site for allegedly raking in 'millions in revenue', while recruiting hackers to keep its cogs turning
XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Quicksilver graphics card on a blue background with angel wings on either side
XFX is letting you add customisable 3D printed wings to its Quicksilver RX 9070-series graphics cards
Gigabyte G6X gaming laptop
More affordable sub-$1,000 RTX 50-series laptops likely coming in May as RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 models spotted online
Marvel Rivals Human Torch
Marvel Rivals is carrying on the tradition of chaotic patches after buffing two of the most annoying heroes, but I main one of them, so I'm not complaining
 photo shows a factory tool that places lids on data center system-on-chips at an Intel fab in Chandler, Arizona, in December 2023. In February 2024, Intel Corporation launched Intel Foundry as the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era, delivering leadership in technology, resiliency and sustainability.
So, wait, now TSMC is supposedly pitching a joint venture with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom to run Intel's ailing chip fabs?