No Man's Sky Updates Take Two To Three Times Longer To Build For Switch And Steam Deck — And Hello Games Does It Anyway

 

Hey, Daily Quest readers.

No Man's Sky is heading into its tenth year, and the updates just keep coming. From completely rebuilding the universe with Worlds Part 1 and 2, to overhauling shipbuilding with Voyagers, to literally turning the game into a Pokemon-style creature battler with Xeno Arena, Hello Games has been on an insane run. But here's something that makes all of it even more impressive: getting those updates onto Switch, Switch 2, and Steam Deck takes two to three times longer than building them for PC and consoles. And this tiny studio is doing it all while also working on their next game. Let's talk about just how wild that is.

Handheld Ports Are A Massive Engineering Challenge

Hello Games engine programmer Martin Griffiths pulled back the curtain on just how demanding handheld support really is in a recent statement.

"The mobile platforms like Switch 1 and 2, along with Steam Deck take a disproportionate amount of engineering time with every update we release," Griffiths explained. "A bunch of us at Hello Games probably spend 2-3x more time to make these updates seamlessly work, exactly like the other consoles do along with PC/Mac etc."

Let that sink in. Every single one of those 40+ major updates that No Man's Sky has received had to go through that process for handheld platforms. That is an enormous amount of extra labor baked into each release cycle.

40 Major Updates And Counting

To fully appreciate how staggering this is, it helps to look at the sheer volume of content Hello Games has delivered since launch.

Notable No Man's Sky updates at a glance:

• 40+ major content updates since launch
• 14 updates delivered in just the last two years
• Worlds Part 1 and 2 added billions of new planets
• Voyagers completely overhauled ship building
• Xeno Arena introduced alien creature capturing and battling

Every single one of those releases required 2-3x the engineering effort just to land on handheld devices in the same shape as the PC and console versions. The dedication that takes is almost hard to wrap your head around.

A Small Team Doing The Work Of A Much Bigger One

What makes this even more remarkable is the size of Hello Games. This is not a massive studio with hundreds of developers to throw at problems. It's a relatively small UK-based team that has somehow managed to keep delivering massive updates while simultaneously developing their next ambitious title, Light No Fire.

The fact that Switch and Steam Deck players continue to get the same full update experience as everyone else — despite the enormous extra effort required — says everything about how much Hello Games genuinely cares about its community.

Final Thoughts

Next time a No Man's Sky update drops on your Switch or Steam Deck, just remember the extra hours that went into making that happen. Hello Games truly deserves all the respect in the world.

What do you think? Does knowing the extra effort behind these updates make you appreciate No Man's Sky even more? Drop your thoughts below — and follow @TheDailyQuest0 for more daily gaming quests!