Nine weeks after No Man’s Sky’s 1.09 patch, Hello Games has announced that it will be releasing an update to the game “this week,” with “detailed patch notes” to follow “soon.”
The post on the game’s website states,
“Hello,
This week Hello Games will be releasing an update to No Man’s Sky. We’re calling it The Foundation Update, because we have added the foundations of base building, and also because this is putting in place a foundation for things to come.
Detailed patch notes will follow, and release will be soon.
Coming from five years of intense development, immediately after No Man’s Sky released the team spent six weeks updating the game with 7 patches across both platforms (the last of these was 1.09 on Sept 24th which you can read about them all here http://www.no-mans-sky.com/log/). These fixed many of the most common or critical bugs and issues post-release.
In the nine weeks since then our small team has been hard at work on development, testing and certification for the Foundation Update. It won’t be our biggest update, but it is the start of something.
The discussion around No Man’s Sky since release has been intense and dramatic. We have been quiet, but we are listening and focusing on improving the game that our team loves and feels so passionately about.
Positive or negative feedback, you have been heard and that will truly help to make this a better game for everyone.
This update will be the first small step in a longer journey. We hope you can join us.
Thank you,
Hello Games”
While the cryptic announcement is short on details, Hello Games claims that this soon-to-be-released update will be only the “first small step in a longer journey.”
We’ve know about plans to introduce features like base building into the game for a while, but there hasn’t been any real timeline for when things like this would be added. The previous update, released at the end of September, tried to address a number of bugs that were hindering performance for players on PS4.
This latest news comes after months in which the relationship between the players and the developer deteriorated as a result of expectations going unmet and limited communication from Hello Games. In the aftermath of No Man’s Sky’s release, many players asked for refunds of the game, while at other times the Reddit community devoted to the game had to be temporarily shut down due to the amount of toxic comments flooding the channel.
During this time, some wondered if the game’s creative director, Sean Murray, had vanished, but Hello Games said he was “fine” and the studio was hard at work on improving and adding to the game. Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida even weighed in on the situation, saying “I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one.”
In late October, Hello Games’ Twitter account and Murray’s email were hacked. The hacked account then sent out a tweet saying “No Man’s Sky was a mistake,” with fraudulent emails from someone posing as Murray appearing to validate the sentiment. The weird series of events briefly revived the controversy surrounding, with Hello Games momentarily communicating to the world to say it had regained control of its accounts.
The developer went quiet again until today’s announcement.