Last week, Hello Games released the OMEGA update for No Man’s Sky. On the occasion, the British independent studio also made the game free to play that weekend, hoping to attract new players.
Today, the studio shared a message with the press, revealing it was pretty nervous ahead of this particular update, as expanding the servers to accommodate the free players could have backfired. However, everything went relatively smoothly, exceeding Hello Games’ internal expectations. No Man’s Sky now has more players than ever at this time of the year, according to the studio.
That’s why they have decided to repeat the free weekend, even though the original plan only included one weekend. As such, No Man’s Sky is once again open for everyone to enjoy until Monday on all platforms (Windows PC, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch).
Hello Games then said it has ‘big and ambitious’ plans for the game in 2024. It suggested more of these free weekends may be on the way, as the studio aims to be as generous as possible with the community. Meanwhile, No Man’s Sky received a lot of hotfixes following the OMEGA patch, fixing a number of issues. More hotfixes will be pushed over the next few weeks; a new experimental build was detailed here.
As a reminder, these are the highlights of the OMEGA update:
- Expeditions are now integrated into the main game, allowing players to bring their spaceships and multi-tools and then go back to the main save with their rewards;
- The Atlas Path has been revamped;
- A huge amount of procedurally generated missions have been added to planets;
- A pirate Dreadnought ship can be commandeered after defeating the fleet of freighters.
