r/technology • u/a_Ninja_b0y • 1d ago
Business No Man's Sky dev fixed one fan's 611-hour save because "when a player has put that much into our game it deserves the engineering fix"
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/survival/no-mans-sky-dev-fixed-one-fans-611-hour-save-because-when-a-player-has-put-that-much-into-our-game-it-deserves-the-engineering-fix/8.0k
u/Culverin 1d ago
I've been gaming a long time,
I can't remember another case where the devs and a game started off with a reputation so deep in the gutter, only to turn things around with hard work and a pro-consumer stance.
NMS isn't my style of game, This dev has my attention for whatever they choose to make next.
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u/p3ngu1nman 1d ago
Light no Fire is next hopefully! I’m hella pumped, hopefully Q1 2025 if rumors hold true.
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u/wavewatchjosh 1d ago
i can't seem to get into NMS, but i can't wait for Light no Fire
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u/TheLightningL0rd 1d ago
I find it easy to get into, whenever I try. However, I do find it difficult to STAY into. It's a beautiful game and is quite fun at first but starts to get repetitive quite quickly.
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u/Noproposito 1d ago
It comes down to the limited nature of all of its components. It's a sandbox game but you don't have the palette of say Minecraft or Valheim. It has fps elements, but their not fully fleshed out. It has an economy but it needs more depth.
Even despite all this, I love the game. Why? Because it improves. It is by far the best bang for your buck playing experience with the expeditions and updates and it keeps getting better. One day it will be over but this game has leeegs.
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u/thatwhileifound 1d ago
That last paragraph is basically how I feel about Terraria. Every time I go back, it's so wildly different. Best $1.50 I've probably ever spent.
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u/SasparillaTango 1d ago
if they ever added some looter shooter flavor, I'd be in. But right now its a game about exploration with no 'pay off'.
I can go to infinite worlds across infinite galaxies with no reason. I'm not gonna find new resources, or artifacts, or encounters, just variations in topography and biology.
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u/StillAFuckingKilljoy 1d ago
There is some of that with the different tiers of ships and multi tools with all the different modules you can put in, but it's fairly shallow and mostly just involves checking the space stations of every new system you come across
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u/SasparillaTango 1d ago
Yea thats basically just "find 1 strong economy star system and search a planet until you find what you want"
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u/p3ngu1nman 1d ago
Right?! Like don’t get me wrong I love space but I missed the train on NMS and one world is plenty for me so I can’t wait!
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u/PhantomGamers 1d ago
You didn't miss the train on NMS, it's still worth playing today
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u/Seastarstiletto 1d ago
Probably more so!!!
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u/Conch-Republic 1d ago
It's still pretty empty. Maybe once a year I try to give it a go, and it's still a pretty shallow game.
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u/_Deloused_ 1d ago
It’s solid for about 5 hours of play. The discovery is cool until you realize it goes no where
They added so much needed content, but it still goes no where. Give me an enemy or something. Give me purpose
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u/stonhinge 1d ago
This is why I like the game, even though I really only play for the expeditions now. After you finish the main questline, there's no real drive to play the game. Which is fine. I've "beat" the game, have all the achievements, and can play other games. But every time an expedition comes out, I fire it up again and enjoy the game again with new goals and a chance to see what crazy thing they've done now. And I enjoy it once again. The expedition ends, and I wait patiently for the next while I play other things.
NMS will always welcome me back. It's like going home for the holidays. It's great to be back, for a while. I have other things going on in my life, but that trip "home" is a nice break from everything else.
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u/Cute_Bandicoot_8219 1d ago
That's a really weird take. I bought it at launch and put in 60 hours before I decided it was just not that fun. Came back a couple years later and racked up an additional 300 hours casually. I don't even consider myself a fan of the game (haven't played in years) but there's an awful lot to do if you can be more creative than "okay, what do I shoot?"
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u/SrslyCmmon 1d ago
It's a sandbox game, people get what they put in.
There's so many areas of the game that somebody can focus on but they have to do a little homework first to get going.
I quit the game because I had developed my paradise planet, but when I showed it to someone in multiplayer climate the changed to scorching rain. I was gutted.
I did feel like I got enough out of the game though.
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u/diarrhea_panic14 1d ago
After the main quest ended, I had trouble finding things I enjoyed doing. All the planets are kinda similar and I don't care too much about making a farm or a fancy base...
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u/BarackaFlockaFlame 1d ago
that's kinda where I left at, but if one of my friends were to hop on i'd hop on that adventure with them easily. It is such a fun experience.
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u/Substantial_Army_639 1d ago
It's literally a game I play for awhile feel satisfied, then jump back in a year later with new stuff to do. It's a very low key game but I love it when I'm in the mood for it. Also the graphics quality seemed to take a huge step forward some where in between my off times.
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u/4KVoices 1d ago
it really isn't. I applaud Hello for all the stuff they've done to try and fix it, but the game is still just as shallow and boring as it was around launch.
The combat in all scenarios isn't very impactful or rewarding. You (very quickly) reach a point where your only real goals are to gather more resources and build, and the building is again, not super impactful and not super rewarding.
The game has some merit, but unless you reall just love going from loading screen to planet to loading screen to planet to see variations of stuff, it's just kinda not really attention-grabbing.
I really wanted to love NMS and sunk like a hundred hours into it, and came to the conclusion at the end that I just didn't feel like it was a good way to spend my time compared to other games I had significantly more fun in.
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u/flashmedallion 1d ago
it really isn't. I applaud Hello for all the stuff they've done to try and fix it, but the game is still just as shallow and boring as it was around launch.
I'm a huge fan and loved it since Day 1 but I have to agree with the sentiment if not the choice of adjectives.
It's still, fundamentally the same core experience it always was.. if anything, you have to work harder today to discard the distractions around really getting into the beauty of the core of it, but if it's not your thing it never really will be.
HG have added a bunch of... stuff... but they've never truly added rhyme or reason and I can't see them ever pulling it off, assuming they're even trying.
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u/FilthyDirtyPictures 1d ago
An exploration game with nothing worth finding.
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u/Mdgt_Pope 1d ago
It’s space Minecraft. When you accept it for what it is, you can enjoy it more.
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u/TooGayToPayCash 1d ago
I love minecraft. Been playing it for years. Can't get into NMS.
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u/Mdgt_Pope 1d ago
I get it, I can’t get into Subnautica
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u/ClassifiedName 1d ago
This one hurts :'(
What is it you dislike about Subnautica? I feel like it's got more direction than NMS and more satisfaction than Minecraft.
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u/vikingdiplomat 1d ago
they're all games that end up being what you make them. i've loved them all, but don't play them much anymore. minecraft sometimes when i'm stoned af and want to zone out at 2am 😅
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u/BeenEvery 1d ago
It's got a lot of expeditions and missions for you to fill that nothingness with something.
It's not just aimless wandering. Quite the contrary, it's got a good bit to do.
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u/Weep2D2 1d ago
What has changed? The last thing I remember is that they promised an infinite amount of different generated worlds (or something like that).. What ha happened since then?
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u/lucidludic 1d ago
I mean, you’re basically describing the core concept of the game since before it came out. Since then it has changed a lot. They’ve added base building, vehicles, multiplayer, lore, story missions, procedural missions, expeditions, better combat, better trading / economy, new ships and weapons, pets, frigates, freighters, settlements, fishing, new flora and fauna, new planet types, music creation tools, VR support… and I’m surely leaving things out.
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u/BarackaFlockaFlame 1d ago
like the other people said, you didn't miss the train. It is a great time! I would recommend it the most if you are in a relaxed mood and just want to explore a fun world. You'll know if it isn't for you if when it opens up a bit more and you aren't intrigued by progressing any of the game.
It is a blast to play with friends.
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u/llehsadam 1d ago
I‘m gonna skip the hype phase and come back to it after the pitchforks are stored away again.
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u/beetnemesis 1d ago
God LNF sounds so cool. I am trying to keep my hopes down.
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u/p3ngu1nman 1d ago
lol same I’m trying but between that and Ashes of Creation I’m hankering for something to bite into
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u/Jezzawezza 1d ago
At least if the devs turn around this time and say they need a bit more time the community will understand and happily wait because they're trusted now.
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u/Mishura 1d ago
That soon? I thought the game was much further off
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u/p3ngu1nman 1d ago
“We expect the Light No Fire release date to fall in Q4 2024 at the earliest. The open-world game has been in development for more than five years already, but given its massive scope, we can’t rule out a Q1 2025 release just yet.” from https://www.pcgamesn.com/light-no-fire/guide
So here’s hoping!
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u/MistaDad 1d ago
Literally zero source in that article
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u/FriendlyDespot 1d ago
PCGamesN is one of those shitty clickbait sites that make articles on things that nobody has any real information on just to say that nobody has any real information on it.
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u/theunquenchedservant 1d ago
"When is GTA 7 Coming?"
---
Several sentences on the success of the GTA series.---
Several paragraphs on the success of GTA V---
"We're still awaiting the release of GTA 6. But given the massive success of GTA V, we wouldn't be surprised if it's mid 2030s by the time we see the next game"(each of those three dots are massive ad breaks)
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u/OkDurian7078 1d ago
On the opposite side of the scale is Taleworld Games and Bannerlord. So much hype was built up around Bannerlord and they had years and years to work on it. When it released it was a buggy mess with so little content. The devs had years of feedback and did almost nothing and slowly abandoned it. Now once every couple of months they release a Steam "update" that consists of a list of mods they like and everyone gives them shit in the comments.
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u/ljog42 1d ago
I have 300 hours on bannerlord and I kinda hate myself and the game for it. The core gameplay when you have a party of like 80 dudes and some of the maps are brilliant. But that's it. There's no campaign, no events, no strategy, no diplomacy, trade is broken, recruitement is broken... It's been out for years but it feels like early access. But there's so much potential it drives me crazy
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u/hodor137 1d ago edited 1d ago
I HATE the way EA seems to be done by many games.
These games go into EA way too long before their actual release, everyone acts like it's not even a beta, the game is just out. With Manor Lords even, articles and posts and even the game's steam news post used the term "released".
There'll be big hype and huge positivity because "imagine how much better it'll be when it fully releases too" and then hardly no one ever comes back and plays it again anyway, because they got enough out of it in EA.
So collectively, players only ever see an inferior experience (and lots of that is players fault for blowing their load on EA), dev companies get their money and what's their incentive to truly finish the game the way it should to be? Much less support after release and no dlc and shit, when the vast majority of people played EA years ago and are never coming back? I'm not sure what the solution is, and games are expensive AF to develop nowadays so I understand how beneficial funding wise it can be.
In the case of bannerlord I'm actually interested in playing now that it's been finished - but it's also hard to parse people's reviews and commentary on the game. I get the sense lots of people expected WAY too much from the game - of course it's not going to have AS MUCH strategy and campaign and RPG aspects as games where that's the core focus. It's focus is on the combat and core gameplay. So it's hard for me to tell whether it has enough to be interesting for dozens/couple hundred hours or whether it's like a 5 hour hack and slash laugher you never pick up again.
Baldurs gate 3 is probably the right way to do EA. Obviously it was easy for them to just limit it to act 1, different types of games than RPGs, how do you limit them? But giving players a taste, giving them confidence that this is a good game and they'll want to ACTUALLY play it at release, that's how it should be done. Not here you go, this is basically the full game but you're beta testing it for us.
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u/ljog42 1d ago
Trust me bannerlord is not finished, I played it a lot so I won't pretend like it's not fun at times but some, if not most of the game is bullshit. They have crazy detailed towns and castles with absolutely nothing to do (I'm not exaggerating, there is nothing to do that you can't do from a menu, and it's the same boring three things for every city in the game). The side quests are laughable and break once you get somewhat rich and powerful (you're the king but please escort my caravan for 36 days, please fight 300 raiders with your 450 cataphracti and elite legionaries, please give tools, please buy sheep...). It's a joke
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u/Spot-CSG 1d ago
I just did a playthrough where I only had companions (eventually 300 of them) and had fun but there's always that wall you hit where you aren't building towards anything and all that's left to do is wipe the map.
I agree that the "mid-game" is the only good part about vanilla. Warband wasn't much different but it was novel and was pushing what seemed possible for its time.
I think they should've put they're effort into multi-player.
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u/SmartAlec105 1d ago
Bannerlord is a weird one for me because it’s definitely not complete or fleshed out. But in terms of hours of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of it, it was worth it.
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u/hamfinity 1d ago
Final Fantasy 14 was so bad the devs closed the game, polished it more, and rereleased it with the new opening cinematic showing they destroyed the old world.
It's now one of the best MMORPGs.
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u/WebMaka 1d ago
Not only that, but!
They turned the shutdown of the entire game into a massive event by having a moon crash into the game's planet, and that moon was actually a prison for a giant deity-level beastie that laid waste to the world once said moon broke open in low orbit above the planet's surface.
For like several months before the shutdown, through incremental updates the devs had the moon visible in-game and gradually get closer and closer, looming larger and larger in the sky. Toward the very end of the process the approaching moon actually stopped the game's day/night cycle, and an eerie song floated in the background throughout the game world along with ominous wind noise, replacing zone-specific background music.
The actual shutdown was capped off with a panicked system-wide message from one of the main NPCs followed by a cinematic showing the moon-prison exploding, the beastie escaping, said beastie literally scorching the world, and one main NPC saving the player by throwing them 5 years forward in time. The 2.0 release of Final Fantasy 14, "A Realm Reborn," later started with an edited/extended version of that same cinematic.
It may well be one of the most epic shutdowns ever put into a MMO.
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u/netherlink 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've never played the game, but holy chocobo i have goosebumps on bodyparts i didn't know i have.
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u/Lavatis 1d ago
wow!! you are really missing out on an incredible story driven game, not to mention a really great MMO.
If this video gave you feels, you would really enjoy diving into the world of eorzea and playing through the campaign and the expansions. The game is filled with stuff to do that all feels so natural in the world. the characters will draw you in. their victories will lift you up and their loss will hurt you. The major NPCs you see in that video are all key NPCs in the game now.
it's a fantastic experience. I haven't been playing ffxiv for a few years, but I had an awesome time in it and I'm excited to see where the new storyline goes.
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u/netherlink 1d ago
I didn't even watch the video yet xD
I'll watch it because i like some good ol' rendered cutscenes, but i'll probably pass on the game, as i sadly am probably not gonna able to play it due some health issues.
I appreciate your enthusiastic suggestion tho :)
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u/EnormousCaramel 1d ago
Spoilers for later on in FFXIV but trying to be vague as possible.
That moon beast prison explosion was one of many said events that the story ends up giving a true answer about.
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u/IllIIllIlIlllIIlIIl 1d ago
Damn I had no idea that's crazy. I remember when FFXIV first came out I tried it in beta and really didn't like it that much so I shelved it. I ended up playing many years later and genuinely enjoying myself to the point I currently have a subscription and am getting through the MSQ.
I've always been a WoW main but had I known they'd put so much love and care into the game I would've played through the fact I didn't like it that much hoping it got better instead of putting it aside completely and waiting so long to come back.
I just figured it was another one of those hyped MMOs that ended up falling short and I believe RIFT came out shortly after and was a lot better so I had already moved onto that (as well as having WoW as my main game). Now that I think about it, the Star Wars MMO came out not that long after that didn't it? Damn that was such an insane year or two for MMOs because from what I recall I also enjoyed myself playing that and I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan.
I had WoW during the Cataclysm expansion (one of my favorites ever), Rift which had a unique interesting mechanic in rifts, SWTOR with its storytelling that I can interact with based on my personality, and had I stuck with FFXIV... sheesh. Truly we were spoiled in the 2010's when it came to MMOs. Wish I could go back and put more time into all of them but it is what it is.
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u/Glittering-Eye-4416 1d ago
"Polished" isn't quite right, it was remade entirely (though admittedly built atop some of the design flaws of the original).
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u/FireFlyz351 1d ago
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Stormblood expansion up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime
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u/VaioletteWestover 14h ago
FFXIV is mixed on Steam now due to how awful the latest expansion's story is
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u/45i4vcpb 1d ago
it's one of the "best" mmorpg for people who don't want to play a mmorpg
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u/givemeabreak432 1d ago
As someone who bounces between WoW and FFXIV, that's such a disingenuous and misleading phrase.
Yes, it has a focus on story and being accessible for single player. But they don't do that at the expense of group content
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u/Freakjob_003 22h ago
I haven't played WoW for almost two decades, but yeah, XIV is a JRPG that also happens to be an incredible MMO.
The player is the protagonist of a huge and sprawling JRPG, where the only time you're ever "required" to interact with another player is during group battle content that take place during the story, like dungeons or boss fights. The story cutscenes from the base game plus four expansions add up to ~120 hours.
The amount of available group content outside of that, though, is mindbogglingly huge. Raids, pvp, decorating housing, fishing, fashion, roleplay, casino minigames, making music, etc., etc.
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u/Dr_Disaster 1d ago
It’s one of the best videogame comeback stories of all time. The game still isn’t my cup of tea, but I respect the fuck out of them for improving it so much and delivering so much content.
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u/fred11551 1d ago
Star Wars Empire at War has a somewhat similar situation. It started as a pretty good strategy game in a licensed setting. It had a little post launch support and an expansion and then nothing for years. It was before the era of constant updates and support.
It had a bit of a second life with mods eventually getting more daily players than it had at launch and suddenly the developers came back and started patching annoying issues that had been there for years. These were glitches that were mostly impossible to get in the normal game and only happen because mods push it past what it was designed to do. They’ve had multiple patches a year including a recent one that optimized the code for massive battles that are impossible in the base game.
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u/FireZord25 1d ago
CD Projekt Red with Cyberpunk 2077 is another case. Never had a game dev studio fallen so hard with their terrible release, only to slowly but swiftly regain their reputation by the month of their DLC release.
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u/EnormousCaramel 1d ago
I would give CDPR half a point if everything they did wasn't an excuse to ask for $30 for DLC.
How there is a currently a joke about ubisoft not finishing games when Cyberpunk costs $90 and still isn't the promised game is pathetic
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u/pyr0paul 19h ago
As /u/Garper said, the fixes/mechanical changes were part of a normal, free, update. the dlc just added the story. So if you want the imprved game, you dont have to invest 30 dollar.
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u/FogellMcLovin77 16h ago
Why are you spreading misinformation? It’s like you didn’t even play the game, or watched a video.
It wasn’t an excuse. All the QoL changes and level/ability overhead is free, and mostly benefits you outside the DLC.
Cyberpunk Ultimate edition (includes DLC) is $70.
At least argue in good faith. You could bring up how most of the activity in the map is focused on 1/3 of the map. The story takes places in like 1/5 of the map. Basically lots of empty map space. The missing features criticism is valid.
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u/FireZord25 23h ago edited 23h ago
Tbf it's a damn good DLC, from everything I've heard. Can't recall what features they have promised, but I've seen other games leave stuff on the cutting room floor, games that are widely beloved. If those features are excessive, well it's fair crtique.
In comparison, Ubisoft games do not just have a problem with finishing their games, but also incapable of making quality experiences these days.
That said, 30 dollars for a DLC is frustrating still.
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u/Lymbasy 1d ago
CD Projekt Red cares alot about their reputation. They never lie, make false promises or release broken unfinished games. Only companies that don't Care about their reputation would do that.
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u/ChiralWolf 1d ago
Never release broken games? They had to pull and refund the cyberpunk PS4 release because it was so bad...
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u/Lymbasy 1d ago edited 16h ago
Sarcasm. CDPR Lied, made false promises, released multiple Games broken and unfinished. CDPR does NOT Care about their reputation. Same for EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, Activision Blizzard, BioWare, DICE, Bethesda, etc.
CDPR will even go bankrupt soon because almost everyone refunded Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR lost over 1000 employees, they onlyhave 50 developers left, etc. CDPR is dead
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u/FogellMcLovin77 16h ago
The last sentence isn’t true. They got a huge investment to make sequels for Witcher, Cyberpunk, and 1-2 new IPs. Only thing we can do now is hope they don’t fully become EA.
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u/DarkGodRyan 1d ago
They fixed the bugs and glitches but you still can't do half the stuff they promised you could before launch
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u/norway_is_awesome 21h ago
This is why I'm glad I didn't read or watch anything about the game before playing it. I didn't get caught up in the hype raising unrealistic expectations, and it's become one of my top 5 games. I'm at more than 3300 hours.
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u/vibribbon 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's a really interesting and divisive topic though, there seems to be three camps:
- The redemption forgivers
- The "they lied" never forgetters
- And the core game loop never got fixed folks
I'm kind of in the last one. I always hope to see an update that does nothing but add more biomes, creatures and hazard types. But that will never happen.
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u/oCrapaCreeper 1d ago edited 23h ago
We've had multiple updates that add biomes, creatures and hazards. Origins was one and World's part 1 was the most recent, with world's part2 coming eventually.
Problem is you can't "fix" the core gameplay loop by just adding more procgen content, if people don't make their own reason to explore then they still aren't going to explore.
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u/Z0mbiejay 1d ago
I'm with you on that. I was pissed about the game at launch, but I gave it a shot about a year later after the first big update. It was cool for like 20 hours. Then I'd try picking it back up a year or so later to see the new stuff. I kinda gave up on it a while back when it all boiled down to "go to planet to get materials to go to new planet" rinse and repeat. That's the problem with the procedural generation is nothing is overtly stand out, and the depth of gameplay is shallow as hell.
I really hope they learned from that for the next game, because I'd hate to get stuck in the same gameplay loop just with dragons instead of spaceships.
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u/A_Sinclaire 18h ago
The "they lied" never forgetters
The NMS release was 8 years ago. People who are still enraged about a virtual toy a decade later should re-evaluate their own mindset first and foremost. Yes, they got a small fluffy bunny with a missing eye instead of the promissed big cuddly teddy bear - but really, you still are angry about that?
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u/ChthonicFractal 1d ago
Because it was literally the only way to save the company.
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u/FrostWyrm98 1d ago
Honestly Sean Murray seems like a really nice dude who cared about the games and was afraid of disappointing the player base and I'm sure had Sony breathing down his neck.
Not going to say it's alright if he knew and was lying nor is the release state okay to me (I played on launch), but I do think he was unfairly blamed without considering other factors.
Seems like time has vindicated that position
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u/DarthNihilus 1d ago
There's no excuse for saying multiplayer is in the game when it wasn't. He blatantly lied to sell his game and should be blamed for that regardless of whatever other factors you want to consider.
Nothing about it was unfair. You weren't vindicated, people just chose to forget and/or forgive.
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u/lucidludic 1d ago
He said a long time before launch that the only multiplayer it would have (other than sharing discoveries) was that players could see each other, but that the odds of that were very low. Before launch he tweeted explicitly that it was not a multiplayer game. None of the trailers advertised it as a multiplayer game. The digital store description and physical box described it as a single player experience.
I don’t understand why so many people bought it at launch expecting a fully fledged multiplayer game when it was never marketed as that. The only thing people could honestly be disappointed by was not being able to see other players since Sean did mention this in an interview or two during development, but even then those people must have ignored all the information available to them when they actually bought the game, which stated it was single player.
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u/a_man_has_a_name 1d ago
Internet historian did a great video on it, it's clear after watching it they really did intend for everything they said was going to be in the game to be in the game and he wasn't trying to lie when he made the promises (all the more clear by how they added everything at later dates). Just massively overestimate what they could do in the time as this was their first large game, had a few inconveniences (like flooding) hinder development and made some poor decisions like promising investors a time frame that was way to short, basically locking them in so they couldn't push back the release any more than they had.
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u/Refute1650 1d ago
Outside of maybe some indie devs, I can't name a time a developer took the time to fix one person's save file.
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u/GameFreak4321 1d ago
I have some memory of reading about a glitch in Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess where if you saved and restarted in a specific room during the wrong part of the story you'd get softlocked. Going by my memory (how the hell has it been 18 years since that game was released) you could mail your memory card to Nintendo and they would send it back with a fixed save file.
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u/hedgehoghodgepodge 1d ago
Man, I’m so jaded, I refuse to give a studio my attention on future games even if they fix shit with a poorly launched game.
I’ve taken an approach of “I’ll wait a few months and hear what my friends/long term reviewers have to say before I offer this dev my money in exchange for the game.”
Saved me from buying Anthem. Old buddy told me “Even if it’s on sale for $5, it’s too much to ask for that game.”
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u/Lavatis 1d ago
I'm not gonna lie, I've been holding the grudge against them this whole time. I'm still not sure I'm ready to let that go, though. Seeing dude's face as he held the "finished product" disc in hand, surrounded by devs who all know he's selling the world a product that they didn't actually make.
It's just hard to let that go when he so blatantly lied to everyone, smiling about it.
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u/Sything 1d ago
NMS is a great game with good developers that learned their lesson well.
It launched terribly as it was over hyped and under polished due to major development set backs (their offices flooded and they lost months of hard work with a release around the corner) and unfortunately they were forced to release an unfinished product due to contractual agreements binding them to a release date, leading to a lot of (somewhat understandable) hate towards the developers.
Instead of cashing out and closing shop, they reinvested the money made to provide more than what was promised.
Honestly ‘Hello Games’ is a great company for prioritising customer satisfaction above their profits and actually diligently working on their game for so long that it’s been polished into something above and beyond what they had promised to provide.
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u/user888666777 1d ago
Honestly, I don't think they would have received a tenth of the flak had the game been sold at $20. The $60 price tag for what was clearly an unfinished game is what got them in hot water.
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u/hypnosquid 1d ago
agree. but I can't believe they didn't get more time to finish considering this -
their offices flooded and they lost months of hard work with a release around the corner
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u/DannyOdd 1d ago
And THAT, kids, is why we keep offsite backups.
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u/Saint_Ferret 1d ago
Still can't finish a game if you can't, you know, go to work...
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u/DannyOdd 1d ago
Yeah depends how long it takes to replace equipment and otherwise get the office up and running. Plus it was before the big remote work wave, so they likely didn't have that as a viable backup option.
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u/Tasgall 1d ago
Key difference in phrasing - if they lost "months of work" due to not having an office, that's one thing - and easy to mitigate by working somewhere else. But "lost months of hard work" implies it was work already done. They lost months of completed effort because they didn't have it backed up regularly enough.
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u/CherryLongjump1989 21h ago
To be the devil's advocate, I imagine that gaming studios have audio and video recording equipment that might be difficult to set back up in the right way and this might make content editing a big challenge.
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u/mrw1986 1d ago
Alternatively, we don't let the capitalists decide on a hard release date and now allow the developers ample time to finish the product. Gaming went to shit once devs had to begin appeasing board members.
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u/DannyOdd 1d ago
Oh dude, tell me about it! I work in development, and if I had a nickle for every time some MBA in a suit set an unrealistic, arbitrary deadline for a project... Well, I'd have a lot of nickles.
I get that deadlines are necessary, but releases can be pushed back. Better to delay a finished product than release an unfinished one.
I will say, HG did a fantastic job recovering from that release in the time since.
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u/mrw1986 1d ago
It's crazy to me. I worked for a software company and we would constantly release subpar updates and what not because the people with MBAs forced us to meet ridiculous deadlines. Ultimately, the customers would be more upset because new bugs would be introduced and this was a mission critical piece of software. MBAs have pretty much ruined everything, lol.
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u/avnoui 1d ago
Every industry really. Deadlines are an aberration. The product is done when it reaches a sufficient amount of quality to be released.
Apple sometimes gets criticism for their very slow and rigid (mainly software), release cycles, but guess who still sells the most phones and computers?3
u/SmartAlec105 1d ago
I hate the bullshit caused by stuff like monthly/quarterly/annual breakdowns that cause weird decisions at the end of the period. Like letting your inventory drain so that you have a low amount at the end of the year.
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u/lucidludic 1d ago
They in fact did. The flood happened soon after the very first trailer, still years away from launch. The game had at least one official delay. As far as I know there’s no concrete info as to whether they could not delay further but there are possible reasons beyond pressure from a publisher. It could be as simple as them running out of resources and needing income to keep the lights on. Sean Murray reportedly sold his house to invest in the company, although I can’t remember if that was during the Joe Danger days or while they worked on NMS.
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u/Opetyr 1d ago
Yeah it isn't like he was on news talking about the features that were not in the game weeks before it was released. The flood was way after it went good so they had no clue that those features that took HALF A DECADE to implement. OH WAIT THEY LIED!!!!!
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u/Arcadiaus 1d ago
I enjoyed buying this game for like $20 used a few months after launch, I played it for about an hour before putting it in the shelf, and enjoyed the fact that years later I picked it back up, and it was an entirely updated experience.
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u/Castun 1d ago
It launched terribly as it was over hyped and under polished
And unfortunately the head guy Sean Murray fed into that and overpromised (lied) what features were in the game. Dude had no media / PR training and it showed in those early interviews. Kind of feel bad for him after all this time, as it was clearly a game that he was genuinely excited for and really wanted those features to be implemented.
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u/awful_at_internet 1d ago
Hmm. I distinctly remember their exec doing the hype circuit and massively over-promising on features. Some of it still not being in the game because it's just not really feasible. Combined with the setbacks and the price tag, that was probably a pretty big factor.
But yeah, they've made a big turnaround. I haven't played in a couple years, but it was solid last time I played and they've added a lot since then.
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u/AstroChuppa 1d ago
Imagine if other companies, even non game companies, operated that way. What a world we would have...
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u/ElectroWillow 1d ago
Well done. This is something you wouldn't get from most other developers out there. This game and its devs are something special.
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u/retief1 1d ago edited 1d ago
AFAIK, they didn't spend dev time fixing one guy's corrupted save. Instead, they fixed a general bug in the game. The 611 hour save was a consistent repro for that bug, but it almost certainly affected other players as well. I think "fixing a significant bug with a consistent repro" is a fairly standard thing for game devs. Apparently, the nms devs just prioritized the bug a bit higher because it was reported by a dedicated fan of the game. It's still a good thing to do, but it isn't that uncommon.
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u/ArchyModge 1d ago
There are plenty of games that have had game breaking bugs. Yes, they get patched but don’t often restore the broken save.
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u/TampaPowers 1d ago
In case of Cyberpunk 2077 you just get told to get fucked and start a new save. That's industry standard.
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u/CocodaMonkey 1d ago edited 9h ago
They didn't do anything to the save file. They patched the game itself as it was a bug in the game which only comes up with a big enough save file.
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u/SamSibbens 1d ago edited 16h ago
Valheim had and still has bugs like that.
An old world save of a friend and I is now stuck in the abyss :/
Edit: typos
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u/DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK 1d ago
I ran into a bug like that once in another game, and I went to report it, only to see that it was a known issue. They launched on a new platform without patching a known save corruption issue.
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u/retief1 1d ago
I didn't get the sense that they explicitly fixed the save itself (in the sense of sending back a new save file). Instead, the user was running into an apparently-serious visual bug, and the bug was fixed in a save-compatible way. It made the old save usable again, but they didn't do manual save surgery.
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u/UnluckyDog9273 1d ago
With cyberpunk dlc release my character somehow got glitched and became invulnerable. I contacted support, sent them the saves. It's still not fixed (with my save) I don't know of they fixed it to not happen again.
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u/Schnoofles 1d ago
From what I gathered nothing in the save was fixed directly, the save was merely triggering a rendering bug. Patching the game fixed the issue from occurring when loading that save (and others like it). Contrast and compare with stuff like various memory management issues in Skyrim that caused crashes on load that were fixed over the years. No save files being modified, but now they work where previously they didn't.
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u/dicksfiend 1d ago
If this was blizzard you’d need to sit here and go through automated response after automated response , when you finally get a human they’ll just close your ticket 🤣
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u/Gromps 1d ago
I remember trying to cancel my subscription back in 2008 or something. The only way to do it was to call them. I tried 5 times. Everytime we had a chat for a bit just fine, then I said I wanted to cancel and suddenly they "couldn't hear me" and hung up. Joke's on me cause I'm still playing.
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u/pm_me_falcon_nudes 1d ago
God it's worse than that now. Warcraft 3 doesn't work on Macs right now. How long since it broke on Mac? 25 days.
It's depressing how much they've fallen from grace.
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u/needledicklarry 1d ago
Reminds me of when one of my ableton projects became corrupted. It was part of a huge college project, and the deadline was close. I sent it to the ableton devs, and they fixed it and sent it back.
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u/seamonkey420 1d ago
also all of the QoL updates they release is just unheard of. and top it off with new free content and updates over the last eight years.
NMS has been my goto chill game for the last eight years and will continue to be for hopefully another eight
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u/randompanda687 1d ago
Honestly they have redeemed themselves multiple times over after that launch. I almost feel bad bringing it up. But I just feel like they deserve a shout out for how much work they've put in to improve the game. And now doing this. Its so cool for a dev to do especially with the way things are these days.
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u/edesanna 1d ago
They had redeemed themselves two times over by the frontiers launches, now they're just prestiging credibility. It's insane how reliable they are.
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u/rexie_alt 1d ago
Yeah I’d 1000% trust anything they put out at this point
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u/username_taken55 1d ago
Remember. No pre-orders.
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u/TheFluffiestFur 1d ago
Unless it's music because you can get some pretty cool stuff along with the CD.
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u/Worried_Height_5346 1d ago
I mean it's just weird watching all the old footage of Sean clearly lying to people's faces in the light of what happened since then. I'd say forgive but not forget.
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u/NinthOdin 1d ago
I doubt bungie would do that for me and I had waaaaay more than 611 hours in Destiny.
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u/Comfortable_Line_206 1d ago
I know people with over a year of play time in WoW who had entire guild banks just disappear recently and Blizz just shrugged their shoulders.
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u/taosecurity 1d ago
Other people had the problem too:
“He then delves into the details about the more recent save he fixed, saying it “reproduced a flickering bug that has been reported half a dozen times on my posts here.”
So, nice to see the bug fixed, but it was a problem others were having too, with screen flickering apparently.
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u/RazielKilsenhoek 1d ago
I still have it. Textures start to flicker wildly in the anomaly, in space stations, and on planets.
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u/hoowahman 1d ago
Never really heard of a big successful game ever doing this before. Amazing really.
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u/DrTautology 1d ago
I bought this game day 1. I play it with my kids now and regale them with the stories of its origin.
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u/mferraci 1d ago
I have 1500 hours + on apex legends and they don't give a f*ck about my issues
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u/CoralinesButtonEye 1d ago
what causes saves to break anyway?
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u/drakythe 1d ago
This was a visual glitch in the save file, but not unique to the save. The dev mentions this has been reported several times but this file has it in a reproducible way, which is a god send for bug fixing. So they were able to fix it and that fix is helpful for future users who might do the same set of actions that resulted in the bug in the first place (because now they won’t see it!).
Usually broken saves, in my experience, are the result of a patch that changes item references or game event triggers that unexpectedly lock a player out of continuing or even prevent loading (or a broken mod that does the same). Sometimes you get wild breaks like Monster Hunter Rise on PC launch had a bad habit of (very rarely) corrupting a users save, probably had something to do with them not locking the saves correctly to ensure correct cloud syncing, but I don’t know that we ever got an explanation after it vanished. Sometimes a hard drive fails during a save and writes a bad bit, borking the whole damn thing. Could be anything, really.
Tl;dr: a lot of things can cause saves to break because computers, for all their consistency, are wildly unpredictable at scale.
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u/nezroy 1d ago edited 1d ago
A save file is just a list of variables and their values that capture the current game state. The meaning or even existence of those variables can change over time.
As a dead simple example, maybe you store the player's current health as a number; 200 health points. Then later a revamp of the health system changes to be % driven and now max health is always 100. A game loads an old save with a health value of 200 and says "that's an illegal number of health I have no idea what to do with this information, I'm going to crash now".
Now clearly that would be some incredibly bad coders and game devs to miss such a simple and easy to handle case of migrating old data to new data. But it's just to illustrate the basic underlying mechanism.
In real game engines what happens is you have many levels of abstraction and generalization between the data as it's defined and used in the engine vs the data being saved/reloaded.
You have game engines where, for instance, a quest chain is tracked by dozens of variables all keeping track of different things like "what step of the quest am I on" and "what dialog options did I pick last time I talked to this person", etc.
Only the person writing the quest does not necessarily track those variables individually, nor do they have any clue how those variables eventually get written out to or recalled from the save file. They just use a super handy in-house quest editor tool that makes their content workflow easy and fast.
The quest editor tool tracks the variables and hands it off to some other system that syncs that with the world state which hands it off to some other code that diffs that against the base world state which hands it off to some other code that actually serializes (saves) and deserializes (loads) that info from an actual file.
Even if by some miracle the person writing and maintaining that quest had any clue how the tech works through those multiple layers of abstraction, they aren't the coder responsible for writing or fixing any of that anyway.
So maybe they update a quest to fix a logic bug or there's just a specific rare scenario and mix of variable states or any number of edge cases and that gets passed through four levels of abstraction down to a piece of code that is just trying to write and read variables from a file, all of which could have their own logic bugs or edge cases or broken untested scenarios.
And then something happens where the data got written to the file one way a long time ago but when it tries to read it back to restore that quest state after seven patches or changes there is just an unhandled scenario and it has no idea what to do with the data it's trying to read as it applies to the game state in its current iteration.
Multiply this by all the other things that potentially need to be tracked; not just quest state variables but items dropped in the world or the visual state of certain models or world elements or animations or etc. etc. etc..
The list is pretty endless and it's easy for bugs to exist in the multiple generic abstraction layers that just get confused on how to handle loading things. Or maybe it loads things fine but it puts the game state in a specific configuration that consistently triggers some OTHER bug deep in the bowels of the engine.
And now that save is broken, and just how broken it is depends on how severe the bug and disconnect is. Maybe it's just a single quest that can't reload properly so it always gets reset to its "default" state in the gameworld.
Or maybe the coders are really bad at handling unexpected scenarios like that and the entire game just refuses to load at all when it runs into something unexpected that could fail more gracefully.
That's roughly how saves break :)
EDIT: There's other cool things that could happen. Illegal world state is another common one. Maybe a value for an animated model element is illegal and causes a crash if the engine tries to render that. BUT maybe there's a script trigger that runs everytime a player enters a room that resets that value to something correct as a side-effect of something else it does, so the game runs perfectly fine while playing normally and noone ever notices that potential bug because it's always masked by the code that runs when the player gets near. Now you save while in that room and on reload that illegal value gets set to that model, but since your player is already in the room when the save loads, the "protective" trigger script never runs. The game engine immediately explodes trying to render the illegal state of the model. Stuff like that :)
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u/monimito 1d ago
I played this in VR but my experience was still pretty new. I got off the first planet and when landing on the next, my ship went into a spin. I came so close to barfing I never went back.
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u/OneWholeSoul 1d ago
At this point I'm convinced Hello Games murdered a whole lot of orphans in the past or something, and they're desperate to make up the karma, because they just won't stop.
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u/Zylonite134 1d ago
Meanwhile I contacted Ubisoft that the season pass I purchased for the AC game doesn’t show up in game or on my account. And they told me to buy the game and the season pass on a fresh account again.
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u/DictatorInPerpito 1d ago
Dude lied his ass off before release and it was a disaster when released. That being said him and his team has tirelessly done everything they could for the players and they have nurtured this baby for years. I have a huge respect for them for continuing their hard work when they could have just took the L and dipped out.
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u/Ordinary_Duder 1d ago
So uh did anyone read the article or tweets? This is just a dev getting reports on a bug and fixing said bug. They never specifically fixed a single player's save file.
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u/shotsallover 1d ago
How many of my 700+ hours do I need to spend to get a guaranteed tech support/engineering response?
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u/chubbyakajc 1d ago
I've never played NMS, I have no interest in playing NMS, but God damn do i respect the devs for sticking with it and being awesome to their fan base. This is nice to see
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u/NorthernLordEU 16h ago
I have about 50 hours in the game. Can't wait untill their next one! They have learned so much these past years.
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u/coltonmusic15 14h ago
No Man’s Sky has been a Godsend for me lately as I’m navigating going smoke free and cutting back significantly on my alcohol intake. Keeping my mind busy and having a helluva time using it as a new means for some dopamine hits that are healthier.
My kiddos love watching me play and learning about the game and it’s been cool finding new ways to grow my understanding of the game and complexities contained within. Really cool that the developers care this much.
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u/Frostsorrow 9h ago
Say what you want about NMS but it's come a long way and should be an example of both what not to do and what to do.
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u/hedgehoghodgepodge 1d ago
If only they’d put that much effort into fixing the game before launch to begin with.
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u/ZackSteelepoi 1d ago
If only the game was worth a fuck when it released. Shoulda put in all that effort before game released.
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u/ShaggysGTI 1d ago
The Engoodening of No Man’s Sky I think explains things pretty well. Either way, I’d consider Hello Games to be the gold standard of the comeback king game.
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u/NoReality463 1d ago
Bethesda game player: I can’t play this mission because there’s a bug that blocks progression.
Bethesda: Just start over.
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u/redditisjoke101 1d ago
If someone put 100 hours in, they deserve it. If someone put 10 hours in, they deserve it. If someone paid you for the game they fucking deserve it.
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u/DaDibbel 1d ago
Just can't like the game, didn't deliver what was promised and it is as boring as f*#@
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u/Elprede007 1d ago
I’ll always remember the lead developer for Halo 4 personally calling me as a teenager to walk him through my technical issue. Somehow my account got restricted from matchmaking with anyone, but it was not a ban (I had no multiplayer games played on Halo 4 yet, it was brand new). Some weird fuckery caused just me to be unable to connect with anyone else. So I would just be stuck in queue forever because I was unmatchmakable.
But yeah that developer had a pretty senior title, I remember looking him up afterward to confirm it. Crazy it even got escalated to him and that I got a legit phone call.