No Man's Sky Designer Admits "I Made Mistakes"

No Man's Sky launched for PS4 and PC back in August 2016, and at the time it was criticised for a perceived lack of content. The game has grown since, and it gets another big update this week when true multiplayer comes to the game in the No Man's Sky Next update. Part of the problem with the game was that some players felt they were promised more than what was delivered. Sony management has gone on record to say the PR strategy "wasn't great."

Now, the face of No Man's Sky--designer Sean Murray--has released a message to the community in which he acknowledged that he made "mistakes."

"Whilst I couldn't be prouder of the team, I personally made mistakes," Murray said in a blog post. "I could talk all day about things I personally would change. Certainly one regret is that the intensity and drama of launch left no room for communication with the community."

Murray said the team at Hello Studios wanted to focus on "development rather than words," which might have been part of the problem. He also pointed out that Hello Games is a very small team; there were never more than 15 people working on the game, he pointed out.

No Man's Sky Next, which launches on July 24, is just the latest free update for the sci-fi game. It follows previously released updates such as Foundation, Pathfinder, and Atlas Rises.

The game remains immensely popular, it seems, as Murray pointed out that around 1 million people played No Man's Sky on the day that Atlas Rises launched. Everyone who purchased the expansion played for 45 hours on average, Murray said, while 20 percent of players reached 100 hours and 5 percent passed 1000 hours. All up, people have spent more than 200 million hours playing No Man's Sky to date.

"One day I hope to reach a point where I feel No Man's Sky is 'finished,' but luckily there's still so much more we want to do," Murray said. "Working on NEXT feels important to us, but I know it's not the end of the journey. We know the journey would be more fun together."

No Man's Sky is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.