Don't tell Hello Games head Sean Murray that No Man's Sky could've gotten more money out of players if all the game's new content wasn't free, and definitely don't tell him how much more.
"I don't think it would be good for my mental health," Murray tells me. But more importantly, he adds, No Man's Sky updates are free, and will stay free, because the devs want everyone to play them.
Without fail, new No Man's Sky updates packing enormous features invite mobs of players pleading with Murray in his social media replies: "No, really Sean, please take our money."
Behold, the absolute whopper that is No Man's Sky's Steam description: "Play with all major updates since launch: Foundation, Pathfinder, Atlas Rises, NEXT, The Abyss, Visions, the 2.0 BEYOND update, Synthesis, Living Ship, Exo Mech, Desolation and the 3.0 update, ORIGINS, Next Generation, Companions, Expeditions, Prisms, Frontiers, Sentinel, Outlaws, Endurance, Waypoint (4.0), Fractal, Interceptor, Echoes, Omega, Orbital, Worlds Part I (5.0), Worlds Part II, Relics, Beacon, VOYAGERS (6.0), Remnant, Xeno Arena and The Swarm."
Speaking with GamesRadar+, Murray explains how Hello Games has gotten away with free updates for 10 years, and why it's not stopping.
"I'm sure somebody could take me aside, take me into a room and show me some PowerPoint and show me that we could have made more money if we had done in-app purchase or, you know, if we had done DLC or something like that," Murray continues. 'And maybe that would be true. I never want to see that PowerPoint.
"What I know is that I really, really enjoy – and I think the team really gets a kick out of – working on an update and knowing that what I'm working on, everyone is going to experience this. Every player that we have is going to experience this. And I think we really enjoy the journey, and the journey is only possible because every update compounds."
When Hello Games adds something like the Xeno Arena, a Pokemon-esque critter clash, Murray says they're always thinking about how that feature may look "two or three updates from now, and what other things you could add to that, what you could build on top of it."
"That doesn't work if you're fragmenting your audience," he reiterates. If "only some people have this update and only other people have this update," Hello Games couldn't commit to the bit nearly as hard.
"It's a big part of our motivation, what gets us out of bed in the morning," Murray says of that journey. "So it doesn't matter if it's not the most commercially efficient thing that we can do. I think what matters is that it makes us still excited about working on it 10 years out."
The updates, you see, must be free. And they can be free not just because No Man's Sky has become an enormous success for Hello Games, but also because the studio is extraordinarily sustainable, and resistant to the financial pressures of publicly traded giants.
During early development, No Man's Sky's team averaged about six people. Going up to 15 people by launch "felt really big to us," Murray says, and nowadays there are 12 to 20 people on the game at any given moment, between "a whole bunch of things going on in the studio," including world-scale survival game Light No Fire. The entire universe rests in the palms of under two dozen people, yet No Man's Sky continues to churn out hefty updates.
"We're a super small team, so we're lucky from that point of view," Murray explains. "It shields us from some of the craziness that we see outside our window in the wider gaming industry. Personally, I feel quite privileged that I'm allowed to continue working on No Man's Sky. That's sort of how I see it. I feel very lucky that I've been afforded this opportunity. This was a game I always wanted to play. It's a game I feel really passionate about, and I think the team really feels that way. It feels real passion and care for the game. I see that everyday, so I feel lucky."
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