How does this game still get frequent free content updates 8 years later?

[dopadream]

What do they gain? Does it still sell that well? From what I can tell the game has zero microtransactions and still gets more support than a lot of "live service" games I've seen that are riddled with them

[Mr. Bufferlow]

They are a very small company. (40 employees max)

Apparently the game does sell well enough during their sales to support the updates. Only HG knows for sure. They made a big score when the game first released so they may just have limited expectations on profit for each update/sale. Hello Games is doing very well financially.

It is important to note that they are small by design. They like their current structure and the freedom to do projects they enjoy. Not having to answer to shareholders or some nameless parent company probably is a big plus.

I have a feeling they are living the dream that most programmers never get to see.

[dopadream]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

They are a very small company. (40 employees max)

Apparently the game does sell well enough during their sales to support the updates. Only HG knows for sure. They made a big score when the game first released so they may just have limited expectations on profit for each update/sale. Hello Games is doing very well financially.

It is important to note that they are small by design. They like their current structure and the freedom to do projects they enjoy. Not having to answer to shareholders or some nameless parent company probably is a big plus.

I have a feeling they are living the dream that most programmers never get to see.

wow, that really is cool. It's really neat that not only were they able to flip the game around post-launch but also continue to improve on it still even after all this time. It's amazing that this game doesnt have the stigma around it that it once did

[+VLFBERHT+]

Oh yes, the "Hello Games Story" ...

Have you seen the youtube videe "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" with the marque affectionately entitled "Yes Women's Land" ? ... if not... (it's very informative, in a very entertaining way :)

(this vid was done 4 years ago and ALOT! has changed since then... the vid speaks about the first almost 4 years after launch, during "The Engoodening")

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yes+womens+sky

Hello Games has always been a very small indie-dev... i think they are still very tiny coming in at a little over 50 employees. So with little overhead, i suspect they are doing VERY well financially off sales of the game as they attract more and more NMS'ers with the massive improvements over the years. by leaps and bounds...

So much so, word of mouth of their actions over the years to create the best space adventure game of all time has spread, along with, redeeming NMS's and Hello Games reputation by upgrading NMS far exceeding what was seen in the original teasers leading up too release in 2016, the launch that so many were disappointed about at that time.

... and as they keep saying after each Update, "The Journey Continues"

https://www.youtube.com/@HelloGamesTube/videos

P.s. The best Zero-to-Hero game developer comeback story of ALL TIME ! ... but...

Hello Games has always been MY Heroes from the start :)

[Rogue]

Such small minds

[peon]

Like bufferlow said. They are a small company that is not held in shackles by ceos whos only motivation is more profit so they can get a bigger yacht. Pretty rare these days.

[Dirak2012]

They are small indie company, living their dream. However this also has the effect of NMS being a mishmash of random ideas that doesn't work together at all.
It's an okay sandbox, one that is virtually infinite. But as an structured game, it is quite poor.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

I should add that HG slowly released the game to every reasonable hardware format (and a few I was surprised could even run the game). Not in any particular order Xbox, MacOS, Switch, besides Playstation and PC.

Each iteration brought a new group of buyers for the game. Even with the piss poor multiplayer, a lot of folks bought the game for that feature alone. I have never gotten a taste, but the VR game play seems to be really impressive from reports.

[Yggdrasil Burnes]

They ARE making a new game, more fantasy themed, and with a seemingly more concentrated scope. No Man's Sky is, was, and always will be a cool proc-gen space sandbox, and HG have been upgrading it in ways I never thought they'd go to. I never thought space stations would ever change. It is, though, as you said, one game, and an older one, and many people have already bought it as many times as they are willing to. They are taking all the lessons they learned with NMS into their new game, while simultaneously continuing to iterate upwards on NMS. To think, Sony almost got them destroyed with their release requirements. HG were bad at PR and Sony was not willing to delay past the holidays. If they were lesser developers, they would not have ever recovered. For them to shut up, lock in, and quietly endure the nerd rage of countless shirked gamers for basically free is not something most developers are willing to do, and even if they are, are not usually capable of doing right. HG going nose to the grindstone during their radio silence was, frankly, a genius PR move and was objectively the best thing a developer CAN do. Hype is largely a poisonous thing, whereas Good Will can never cause issues.

Most people bought the game just to support the actions HG took, some people bought it because they genuinely love the game, and most people are buying now because word of mouth continues to propagate, but it is the right move to make a new game to continue with their business and try new things.

[dreamrider]

Does anyone know if they have had any non-public revenue streams from licencing the tech they have had to develop, in particular their procgen system/code?

[Malferellon]

Originally posted by dreamrider:

Does anyone know if they have had any non-public revenue streams from licencing the tech they have had to develop, in particular their procgen system/code?

Actually, and I don't know the details, but the procgen code I think came from another "inspiration"...something open-sourced, I think. So... I'm not sure if they even CAN license out their code. And it would be suicide if they did...NMS is unique in its sheer breadth of scope due to their procedural generation model, and will also be so for Light No Fire. I don't think I'd ever give that thing away, for any price.

[Malferellon]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil Burnes:

They ARE making a new game, more fantasy themed, and with a seemingly more concentrated scope. No Man's Sky is, was, and always will be a cool proc-gen space sandbox, and HG have been upgrading it in ways I never thought they'd go to. I never thought space stations would ever change. It is, though, as you said, one game, and an older one, and many people have already bought it as many times as they are willing to. They are taking all the lessons they learned with NMS into their new game, while simultaneously continuing to iterate upwards on NMS. To think, Sony almost got them destroyed with their release requirements. HG were bad at PR and Sony was not willing to delay past the holidays. If they were lesser developers, they would not have ever recovered. For them to shut up, lock in, and quietly endure the nerd rage of countless shirked gamers for basically free is not something most developers are willing to do, and even if they are, are not usually capable of doing right. HG going nose to the grindstone during their radio silence was, frankly, a genius PR move and was objectively the best thing a developer CAN do. Hype is largely a poisonous thing, whereas Good Will can never cause issues.

Most people bought the game just to support the actions HG took, some people bought it because they genuinely love the game, and most people are buying now because word of mouth continues to propagate, but it is the right move to make a new game to continue with their business and try new things.

NMS is the only game I ever bought twice (Steam and Nintendo Switch). It's pretty obvious that HG loves this game themselves. It's not just a product for them; not just a revenue stream. They love this thing like it's their baby, and they have taken very good care of it.

[Ograus]

there are two ways in gaming business

1) treat gamers/customers as partners and try to build a longterm repuration/satisfaction based business model/relationship
2) treat gamerrs as a product, to satisfy the true customers, the investors&managment by milking the the gamers to the max and pray to the idols of the quarterly reports and greed

looks like hello games uses the sustainable first one and is very happy with it
blizzard for example worked that way too until they became part of actiblizz and turned to the second way

known standard preocedures for the seconds business models are:
-selling games in little slices
-price gouging (especially for remasters/remakes for example)
-rng/gacha systems based ingameshops
-pay to win aka p2w
-pay to shortcut
-"premium" accounts
.......

my conclusion is, that i will allways recvommend a good game of a developer/publisher working by way no 1
a shining gem for example like no mans sky :-)

but even a very good game sold "way 2" will have a hard time looking for a recomendation,
so either a "sorry i got no photograph for you"/stay away
or
in certain ultra rare cases with a "only recomended for platinum card plus users"

[Blitzkrieg Wolf]

A game company that continues to support a game 8 years past its launch is a game company I will continue to support in these times, Hello Games did have a rocky launch with No Man's Sky but they have dedicated themselves to refining it into what it was supposed to be at launch and improving it even to this day... that's something you'd be hard pressed to fine in any of the major "AAA" game studio/publisher combos operating today.

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

They are a very small company. (40 employees max)

Apparently the game does sell well enough during their sales to support the updates. Only HG knows for sure. They made a big score when the game first released so they may just have limited expectations on profit for each update/sale. Hello Games is doing very well financially.

It is important to note that they are small by design. They like their current structure and the freedom to do projects they enjoy. Not having to answer to shareholders or some nameless parent company probably is a big plus.

I have a feeling they are living the dream that most programmers never get to see.

Even 40 costs. At 50K a year each the 2,000,000 a year. Plus all the overhead workplace and equipment etc.

Easily 200K a month probably more. If the game sells for 50 they need to sell 4000 a month.

Not sure how many games they have but if they are doing it on just this game, I'm amazed.

No matter how good the game is sooner not later the sells drop too almost nothing. Older games don't get tons of new sells. It why most do DLCs to help with costs.

[taniwhat]

UK company, not a US company.
So, 90% of the profit not going to exec bonuses and cocaine for a start makes it viable.