No Man’s Sky Had Almost Half of the Original Launch’s Player Count Return Over the Weekend on Steam

After failing to deliver on numerous promises made by the developers, No Man’s Sky had one of the most controversial launches ever back in 2016.

Now, No Man’s Sky is back in the news… but this time, it’s due to the game’s very well-received “NEXT” update that was just released.

Last week, we reported on the NEXT update’s launch peak of 43k concurrent players on Steam – which at the time was very impressive considering the game’s player base has dropped from its original peak of 212k players to recently under 1k concurrent players.

But since launching NEXT, No Man’s Sky has continued to grow, and over the weekend hit a peak of 97k concurrent players on Steam. Something nobody believed would ever happen again.

NEXT isn’t the first big update No Man’s Sky has received over the past two years. After all the backlash, Sean Murray and his small team of developers at Hello Games have been hard at work adding tons of new features each year.

And while base-building, portals, vehicles, and giant freight ships were all great new features that brought back tiny fractions of the player base, it was true 4-player online multiplayer that helped No Man’s Sky return to its former glory back in Steam’s top 10 most played games.

The core gameplay of No Man’s Sky is still very similar to what it was at launch, so most players will likely lose interest again. But with the developers continuing to add new content for free and the game discounted by 50% on Steam, this time more players than ever are leaving with a very positive experience.