This might be unpopular, but it feels like the “redemption” story around No Man’s Sky has become more of a cultural comfort narrative than an honest look at what happened.

Let’s be real — most of those updates were just delivering delayed promises, not generosity. The game we were originally sold was missing a lot of advertised features, and Hello Games never actually apologized for lying. On top of that, every update brings more bugs and half-fixed systems, and the community acts like free beta testers for Light No Fire, while still framing it all as “passion” and “commitment.”

It’s like Hello Games built a shoddy, unfinished building, declared it open anyway, and then decided to use it as a testing ground for their next building — and somehow it wins “Best Ongoing Building” every year.

So why do people keep buying into this narrative? Because it’s a comfortable story? Or is it somekind of parasocial relationship going on there?