No Man’s Sky players have recently seen the release of a huge update to the game called Beyond. The update apparently adds in a ton of in-game content, but many players are having trouble accessing these features due to a host of bugs and glitches. Since the release of the update, the team at Hello Games have sent out a number of hotfixes to try and address these issues, with varying degrees of success.
Features included in this update is a new multiplayer hub aboard Nada and Polo’s ship. Many players are unable to access the space completely, as even after the 6th iteration of hotfixes for the update the hub world crashes on launch. Some are able to work around this by turning off ambient multiplayer, but that defeats the purpose of the multiplayer space. Others cannot talk to Nada or Polo with multiplayer active.
Via @SouthernCard MASSIVE BUG DELETING FREIGHTERS/BASES#NoMansSky #NoMansSkyBeyond @hellogames @NoMansSky pic.twitter.com/jn5qsPhhzM
— D4NNY (@T3MPEST86) August 18, 2019
This is the main place that crashes occur, but for console players especially they can shut down your game at every time. This instability is especially frustrating given that No Man’s Sky doesn’t allow for manual saving without the use of certain pieces of technology. A lot of progress can be accidentally lost, especially for those in the early game. This can be somewhat mitigated by entering and exiting your ship to autosave the game, but this actively discourages exploration.
Even more unfortunately, is the number of issues that were introduced to already existing areas of the game. A new common issue that players encounter is falling through the floor of a space station when walking to talk to certain vendors. Players are then rocketed into the vacuum of space and sometimes die. Best case scenario you are able to reload your save without dying, and only minorly inconveniences the player.
On top of this, some features promised in the update like faster loading times seem negligible if they made a difference at all. It is worth mentioning that the developers have been hard at work trying to fix these issues. Certainly, the game is much more stable than the first version after the update, but back then it was nigh unplayable.
Long-time players of the game are used to this kind of treatment, unfortunately, with Hello Games often releasing unstable updates, especially those that introduce major content. The game was famously unfinished and unpolished upon release, indicating a troubling pattern from the studio.
Certainly, we are all excited to receive new updates and content for games. Players wanted to jump right in on day one of Beyond to experience all it has to offer. Unfortunately, it is often impossible to do so for No Man’s Sky.
It is undeniable that the team is working to fix the problems, but this opens some interesting ethical questions, many of which parallel to questions brought up upon the game’s original launch. Is this pattern of behavior from the studio acceptable as long as they fix issues eventually? Or is this unforgivable based on the developer’s history?
