No Man’s Sky players discover a treasure trove of historical importance for the game

Today, No Man’s Sky players have made a discovery of great historical importance for the game they love. It appears as though developer Hello Games has been uploading and preserving each version of No Man’s Sky as it’s released, and now you can download and play them all.

Related: How to manually save in No Man’s Sky

Twitter user Southerncard today shared a Reddit post where u/laikaspark had shared links to full versions of No Man’s Sky. The links are archive files that, once downloaded, can run a specific version of the game using GOG. We’ve had a look, and the versions go all the way back to vanilla No Man’s Sky, the version that everyone was excited about but not many enjoyed playing. The reason for this is that it had none of the additional side content the game has today. Your only goal was to find a ship, collect and build upgrades as you traveled from planet to planet, and reach the center of the galaxy.

These files only exist because Hello Games has uploaded them to GOG. We’re not sure why the developer felt the need to document every version of the game, but it’s great from a preservation point of view to be able to see how the game played as each update was released. Any fans who want to relive the first days of a particular update, such as Atlas Rising, can now easily do so and share that experience with friends.

No Man’s Sky was first released in 2016. In the lead-up to the launch, fans were very excited by the prospect of exploring trillions of procedurally generated planets. However, the reality was underwhelming, to say the least. The game’s planets all looked the same, the creatures felt broken due to the way their heads and bodies were seemingly glued together, and the goal of reaching the center of the galaxy was boring because the gameplay loop wasn’t enjoyable.

Since then, there have been 23 updates, and the game is unrecognizable compared to the early versions. There are pirates, space stations, NPCs to build a town with, living ships, and freighters. You can build a base, play on Nintendo Switch, and so much more. If you want to go back and see what the game was like at launch or when the Pathfinder or Foundation update was first released, then you can do so, thanks to this archive of files.