Repairing a reputation is a long and challenging process. This is something the developers of the space action game No Man’s Sky can attest to. It took their game eight years to achieve 80% positive reviews on Steam.
No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky was released in August 2016, and its launch was overshadowed by numerous technical and other issues. For instance, at launch, the game suffered from poor performance, crashes, and freezes during loading, and it lacked the promised multiplayer feature. Within the first couple of days, Steam users left over 10,000 negative reviews. As a result, the initial rating of No Man’s Sky on the Valve platform dropped to "mixed," and over time plummeted to "mostly negative."
Data from SteamDB shows that No Man’s Sky received more negative than positive reviews on Steam up until January 2017.
Dynamics of user reviews for No Man’s Sky on Steam
Nevertheless, Hello Games did not give up. They began actively developing No Man’s Sky, regularly releasing patches with bug fixes and new content. Gradually, they managed to turn the situation around and earn the audience's appreciation.
“Damn, guys, it happened. All reviews: very positive. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea what this means to us,” wrote Hello Games’ head Sean Murray on social network X.
The next milestone on Steam is an “overwhelmingly positive” rating. For this, No Man’s Sky needs to achieve at least 95% laudatory reviews.