Key Highlights:
- No Man’s Sky has reached its 10th anniversary after receiving 40 major free updates since August 2016.
- Hello Games has revealed Cosmos as the game’s next update, but has not announced its features or release date.
- Sean Murray says tens of millions of players have spent hundreds of millions of hours in No Man’s Sky, yet less than 1% of its planets have been explored.
No Man’s Sky has officially turned 10 years old, and Hello Games has marked the anniversary by revealing the name of its next update: Cosmos.
The studio released a 10th Anniversary Trailer looking back across a decade of additions before ending on a previously unseen Cosmos title card. Hello Games has not revealed what the update contains or when it will launch.
No Man’s Sky originally launched for PlayStation 4 on August 9, 2016, followed by the Windows version. Ten years later, founder Sean Murray says Hello Games has delivered 40 major updates without charging existing players for them. Those releases have added systems including base building, Exocraft, settlements, mechs, companions, living ships, Expeditions and extensive universe overhauls.
The Cosmos reveal also continues a familiar Hello Games anniversary tradition. The game’s seventh-anniversary video teased the Echoes update before Hello Games revealed its contents. Echoes launched six days later.
There is no evidence yet that Cosmos will follow the same turnaround. Hello Games has not provided a release window, version number, platform-specific information or feature list for the new update. Any claims about its theme based purely on the Cosmos name or teaser artwork remain speculation.
The anniversary has nevertheless produced some unusually useful figures about the scale of No Man’s Sky after a decade.
Murray says tens of millions of Travellers have spent hundreds of millions of hours exploring its procedurally generated universe. Despite that activity, players have collectively visited less than 1% of the available planets.
That last figure is particularly striking because No Man’s Sky is not struggling to attract returning players. Hello Games says the Voyagers update in August 2025 produced the game’s largest player population since its original launch.
No Man’s Sky reached 93,332 concurrent Steam players after Voyagers. It was the game’s highest Steam peak since 2018 at the time. Voyagers had introduced Corvette construction and multi-crew starships.
Voyagers fundamentally expanded starships by introducing buildable Corvette-class vessels with walkable interiors, crew spaces and planetary landing capability. Hello Games followed it with Breach in October 2025, which expanded Corvette construction through salvageable ship graveyards, new components and additional customisation.
Support continued into 2026. Remnant introduced large-object manipulation and customised Exocraft transport, Xeno Arena added creature collection and battling, and The Swarm introduced the Hive of Glass alongside a faction-driven Expedition. Hello Games was still patching The Swarm as recently as June.
For me, that is what makes the Cosmos tease more meaningful than a normal update logo. No Man’s Sky has reached its tenth birthday while Hello Games is still introducing systems substantial enough to change how an established player actually interacts with its universe.
Cosmos is therefore joining a game that looks substantially different from the one released in 2016.
The anniversary also confirms that development of Light No Fire has not replaced work on No Man’s Sky. Murray says Hello Games is simultaneously working on its next game and “big things” for No Man’s Sky, although he stopped short of explaining whether that description refers exclusively to Cosmos or to additional updates beyond it.
Hello Games has become deliberately cautious about showing Light No Fire. Murray said in anniversary interviews that the studio had originally considered showing more of the fantasy survival game much earlier, but its strong Steam wishlist performance reduced the need to continue building hype before the team was ready.
That makes the restrained Cosmos reveal consistent with how Hello Games now communicates. The studio has confirmed the next destination without attaching mechanics, promises or a date that it is not yet ready to substantiate.
No Man’s Sky begins its second decade with Cosmos officially named as its next update. What that name actually means for the universe remains the next thing Hello Games has to reveal.
