No Man's Sky explained before you start

No Man's Sky came out in August 2016, and on 9 September 2026 Hello Games released its 7.0 update, Cosmos. For anyone thinking of starting now, that ten-year gap is the real question: what does a game rebuilt in public for a decade hand a new player on the first day, and what does it ask of them? This page covers the modes, how the game is sold and what it charges for, the price on each storefront as it stood on 12 September 2026, what Cosmos and its first patch changed, the PC requirements, the age ratings, and the things we could not pin down. Everything below comes from a page in the Sources list, read on the day of writing, most of it from Hello Games' own site and the stores themselves.

No Man's Sky key art: an astronaut in a white and red suit in front of a red planet, flanked by a green-helmeted figure and a small robot, with starships, asteroids and a dark diamond shape around them and a large 10 behind the title lettering — The current key art on Hello Games' press page, with a large 10 behind the title. Image: Hello Games press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-12.

Who makes it, and where it shipped

Steam's entry for app 275850 names Hello Games as both developer and publisher, and its legal line reads "No Man's Sky - © 2016 Hello Games Ltd. Developed by Hello Games Ltd. All rights reserved." The factsheet on the game's press page places the studio in Guildford, UK, and its boilerplate calls Hello Games the "tiny developer behind Joe Danger, No Man's Sky, The Last Campfire and the forthcoming Light No Fire." Publishing was not always that tidy. The PlayStation US page still carries the line "SIE / Hello Games", and the ESRB's older certificates name Sony Interactive Entertainment as the submitting publisher for the PC and PlayStation 4 versions and 505 Games US for Xbox One. The current certificate, covering PlayStation 5, Switch and Xbox One, names Hello Games.

Platform	Date on that store's US listing	Source
PlayStation 4	9 August 2016	PlayStation US game page
Windows PC (Steam and GOG)	12 August 2016	Steam appdetails; GOG store page
Xbox One	24 July 2018	Xbox US store listing data
PlayStation 5	12 November 2020	PlayStation US page, embedded product data
Nintendo Switch	7 October 2022	Nintendo US store listing data
Nintendo Switch 2 Edition	5 June 2025	Nintendo US store listing data

The limits here are specific. These are North American storefront dates. The PlayStation 4 date is printed on the page, but the PlayStation 5 date comes from the product data the same page embeds. Microsoft's listing gives a single date for the Xbox product and does not break out Xbox Series X|S, which the page marks as optimised. The press factsheet itself says only "August 2016". No source we read today gives European or Japanese launch days, so none appear here. PEGI's entry does print dates, 04/06/2025 for seven platforms and 05/06/2025 for Switch 2, but those are not 2016 launch dates and we have not used them as such. Steam also lists macOS support, and the PlayStation page lists PlayStation VR2 as optional, without a separate date for either.

What the store says it is

Steam's short description is one sentence: "No Man's Sky is a game about exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe." The press kit uses the same sentence with "galaxy" in place of "universe". The longer About text opens, "Inspired by the adventure and imagination that we love from classic science-fiction, No Man's Sky presents you with a galaxy to explore, filled with unique planets and lifeforms, and constant danger and action." It sets out the only fixed direction the game gives you in one line: "At the centre of the galaxy lies an irresistible pulse which draws you on a journey towards it to learn the true nature of the cosmos."

In practice that is a heading, not a script. The 7.0 patch notes refer in passing to "fixing your ship at the start of the game", and the loop from there is gathering materials, repairing and upgrading the starship, the exosuit and the Multi-Tool, and deciding what kind of traveller to be. Steam's text frames that choice as fighter, trader or explorer. The survival pressure comes from life support and hazard protection, which drain in hostile environments. The Waypoint update's notes list both among the systems you can slow down or turn off.

A No Man's Sky explorer in a patterned blue cape running across a rust-coloured alien plain past a crashed starship, towards glowing floating creatures, with tall dark plants and a huge banded planet in the hazy sky — On the surface of an alien world, a crashed starship beside the path. Image: Hello Games press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-12.

Modes, difficulty and playing with others

The mode structure a new player sees today dates from update 4.0, Waypoint. Hello Games' notes for it say that "All the core difficulty and other differences between the game modes have been reworked into a new framework that players can adjust as they see fit." The old modes were kept as presets, and a Custom game makes every setting adjustable. Waypoint also added Relaxed, which the notes describe as "the full Normal mode experience, but with significantly reduced need to manage survival systems and maintain technology and resources." The same notes mention Creative mode and Permadeath by name. They never print the complete preset list in one place, so we are not listing more than they name. The useful detail for a newcomer is that the choice is not final: "The vast majority of difficulty settings can be tweaked at any time, in any mode." The one caveat the notes give is that "Some limited restrictions are imposed when wishing to play Permadeath."

Expeditions are the other way in. Update 3.3 introduced them as a separate mode in which each event "starts from a fixed point in the universe", structured around milestones that can be completed in any order, with a reward for each finished phase. Rewards earned in an expedition can be redeemed on other saves in any game mode through the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion on the Space Anomaly. Expedition and Permadeath games sit in their own matchmaking pool, and all other modes share one.

Multiplayer is optional and the terms depend on the platform. Steam's categories list online co-op, online PvP and cross-platform multiplayer. Microsoft's listing gives online co-op and online multiplayer for two to four players. The PlayStation page says "PS Plus required for online play" and supports up to four online players. On Nintendo the two listings differ: the original Switch version lists single player and Save Data Cloud only, while the Switch 2 Edition lists Online Play, with the note that a Nintendo Switch Online membership and a Nintendo Account are required for it. Nintendo's upgrade description for that edition begins "Multiplayer - Meet other Travellers and discover, build, and fight together."

What it costs, and what it charges for

Storefront	Region	Regular price	Price on 12 September 2026
Steam	United States	$59.99	$23.99 (60% off)
Steam	United Kingdom	£49.99	£19.99
Steam	Germany	58,99€	23,59€
PlayStation Store, PS4 and PS5	United States	$59.99	$23.99, offer ends 24 September 2026, 06:59 UTC
Xbox store	United States	$59.99	$23.99, offer data ends 17 September 2026, 09:59 UTC
Nintendo eShop, Switch	United States	$59.99	$23.99, sale ends 24 September 2026, 06:59 UTC
Nintendo eShop, Switch 2 Edition	United States	$59.99	$23.99; the upgrade pack from the Switch version is listed at $0
GOG	United States	not read	$23.99, page title "60% off"

Two cautions. The sale prices are a limited offer, and the regular price is the one to plan around. The press factsheet gives that regular price as "$59.99 / €59.99 / £49.99", with the footnote "prices may vary by platform and country"; Steam's German list price of 58,99€ is one example. The Xbox listing also says the game is "included with XBOX Game Pass Essential, Premium and Ultimate" as a cloud-playable title.

The business model is a single purchase with free updates. Sean Murray's Cosmos post says the 7.0 update is "free to download on Wednesday 9th for all existing players across every platform", and Steam's About text lists every major update from Foundation through COSMOS (7.0) as included. The same post says the anniversary expedition has a milestone for each of "the 40 major updates since No Man's Sky launched in 2016." The things that look like extras are time-limited rather than paid. Twitch Drops, which Hello Games calls "free items awarded to players for watching selected streams", are running for the thirteenth time from 10 to 14 September. Rewards must be claimed on Twitch within 24 hours and then appear in the Quicksilver store on the Space Anomaly, which the page says is reachable "on your first sojourn into space after you have established your first base." Expedition rewards are also tied to a window, though Hello Games has rerun past expeditions: over the 2025 holidays it brought back that year's five so players could earn rewards they had missed.

Two things did not fit that picture, and we are reporting them rather than resolving them. First, the Xbox listing carries the notice "+Offers in-app purchases." The ESRB certificate, by contrast, lists Users Interact as its only interactive element, and nothing we read on Hello Games' own pages describes a paid in-game store. Second, Steam lists one add-on, the Starborn Phoenix Ship, collected from the Quicksilver Synthesis Companion, and the store endpoint returns no price for it. The EULA adds a standing caveat for any live game. Clause 3.3 lets you use updates "that we may make available from time to time (although we are not obliged to provide upgrades, updates and additional Game content)."

The current update: Cosmos and patch 7.01

Cosmos is about space itself. In his 9 September post Murray writes that space is "a huge part of our game, but we've never really updated space since release." The update adds a star system map, derelict hulks that can be stripped for salvage and will melt down if you take too much, deep-space outposts with traders and contracts, infested outposts, asteroid belts, free-floating orbital bases, and, in his words, "our most requested feature since launch", the ability to take over a space station as its director. Directors can found alliances, and the patch notes say "Players may join up to three alliances," with the largest and most active shown on a leaderboard. Stars themselves can now be flown to, and the notes warn that doing so is lethal.

A red and white No Man's Sky starship firing purple engines past a dark, spiked capital ship with red lights, in a nebula with a ringed planet and small ships in combat behind — Deep space, the part of the game Cosmos rebuilds. Image: Hello Games press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-12.

For a new save, two lines in the 7.0 notes matter most. Deep-space points of interest "will begin to appear on the star system map once a save has reached the Space Anomaly for the first time", so none of this is on offer in the opening hours, and a short tutorial mission called Signals introduces the map when it does unlock. Salvage also needs equipment: the Tractor Beam is a part for Corvette-class ships, bought at the Corvette Workshop in space stations. The anniversary expedition, Our Journey Continues, is billed as Expedition Twenty-Three and, per the notes, "will begin shortly and run for approximately six weeks". We could not confirm today whether it has begun.

Patch 7.01 followed on 10 September. Hello Games' post said it was "now live on Steam, and will be coming to other platforms as soon as possible", and on 12 September the release log tags it for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox, not Switch. Its fixes include players falling out of space stations, station decorations failing to unlock after purchase, and crashes in audio, inventory rendering and Xeno Arena battles. On the day we checked, Steam's own API reported 43,472 players in game on Steam at 13:56 UTC, and the review endpoint counted 417,206 reviews with a summary of "Very Positive". Steam also displays a Metacritic score of 61 for the PC version, which is Steam reporting Metacritic and not a figure this site measured.

Running it

Steam's minimum PC specification requires a 64-bit processor and operating system, Windows 10 or 11, an Intel Core i3, 8 GB of RAM, a graphics card at the level of an Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB, AMD RX 470 4GB or Intel UHD Graphics 630, and 15 GB of storage, with SteamVR for VR. The Mac minimum is macOS Monterey 12.3, an Intel i5, 8 GB of RAM and a Radeon Pro 570X 4GB. The recommended section on Steam is empty apart from the 64-bit line, so there is no official target above minimum to quote. Steam's compatibility report places the game in its Verified category for Steam Deck. The 7.0 notes add NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, Intel XeSS 3 and foveated rendering on PCVR.

Age ratings

The ESRB rates No Man's Sky Teen for Animated Blood and Fantasy Violence, with the interactive element Users Interact. Its summary describes combat against "alien creatures, human-like figures, and robots" and notes that "some creatures emit large splatters of green blood when shot." PEGI rates it 12: "This game has received a PEGI 12 because it features moderate violence to fantasy characters and non-realistic violence to human-like characters." The PEGI text adds that players "can attack other human-like players" and that some dark, creature-infested space stations play "eerie and tense music". Steam's data also carries a USK 6 entry for Germany, which we did not check against the USK's own database. For a household decision, the practical points are that online play means strangers can be encountered and attacked, and that both boards place the violence at the fantasy end.

Before you start

Start on Normal or Relaxed. Nearly every difficulty setting can be changed later from the pause menu, so the first choice is not a commitment, except for Permadeath.
Do not expect the Cosmos content at once. The new space points of interest only appear after a save first reaches the Space Anomaly.
Budget for online access on consoles: PS Plus on PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch Online on Switch 2. The original Switch listing does not list online play at all, and the Switch 2 upgrade pack is listed at $0.
Expeditions are optional, but their rewards carry over to your main save, so one that interests you is worth joining while it runs.
Twitch Drops for Cosmos end on Monday 14 September. You can earn them before owning the game and claim them later in the Quicksilver store.
The current sale ends on 17 September on Xbox and 24 September on PlayStation and Nintendo in the US. After that the regular US price is $59.99 on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo.

What we could not confirm

Launch dates outside North America; a separate Xbox Series X|S date; what the Xbox "in-app purchases" notice refers to; whether the Starborn Phoenix Ship costs anything on Steam; GOG's regular price; whether the 15 GB storage figure still holds after 7.0; the start date of Expedition Twenty-Three; and when patch 7.01 reaches Switch. Each of these is left open rather than filled in.

The row in the dataset

The dataset records No Man's Sky with Hello Games as developer and publisher, a first release of 9 August 2016 from the PlayStation US page, the platforms PlayStation 4, Windows PC, macOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, the genre action-adventure survival, and the era current. It is the first row in the set for a game still receiving major updates ten years after launch.