Developer Hello Games has announced No Man’s Sky: Beyond, a massive update that will include a free multiplayer mode dubbed No Man’s Sky Online. While multiplayer is already available in the game, Hello Games has promised that Beyond, which is expected to arrive this summer, will transform it into “a radical new social and multiplayer experience which empowers players everywhere in the universe to meet and play together.”
The teaser trailer for the Beyond update doesn’t give much — or anything, really — away about its contents. A ship is shown in one of the game’s colorful docks, and the camera zips to the entrance before fading to the title card.
Despite the overhaul to multiplayer, the game will remain completely free and no new microtransactions will be implemented as a result.
“These changes are an answer to how we have seen people playing since the release of [previous update] Next, and is something we’ve dreamed of for a long time,” Sean Murray, the game’s director, added.
No Man’s Sky is a drastically different game now than it was at launch in 2016, and with the upcoming Beyond update, developer Hello Games is set to transform how players experience multiplayer and interact with each other.
Next arrived in 2018, and gave players far more control over how they played the game. Content additions included base building, multiplayer, and more storytelling. The latter was particularly important, as the game launched in 2016 with almost no incentive to keep playing other than to see the “end.” It also launched with limited options for customization and players were forced to play by themselves across its procedurally generated universe.
It appears that the particulars regarding Beyond’s content are still up in the air, as Murray said Hello Games will only reveal them when the team knows it “can be precise.” We should hear more over the next weeks and months, and the studio plans to continue supporting No Man’s Sky for the foreseeable future.
No Man’s Sky is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Hello Games is now working on an adventure game called The Last Campfire, which is due to be released for unannounced platforms at some point in 2019. The game was created and designed by just two people.
