It's no secret among gamers that No Man's Sky had a rocky launch. When the game launched over eight years ago, it was nearly universally slammed by gamers for its lack of completion and failure to deliver on lofty goals. Since then, though, the game's developer, Hello Games, has issued several updates, adding content and improving mechanics to a point where most consumers—at least those on Steam—are apparently happy with the state of No Man's Sky.

According to SteamDB, in January 2017, just three months after No Man's Sky launched, it had more than twice as many negative Steam reviews as positive. That situation started to change in around July 2018, when a spike in positive reviews rolled in after the nearly revolutionary No Man's Sky Next update. At that point, No Man's Sky still had a roughly 50-50 split between positive and negative reviews, but it was already trending upwards after the initial wave of just over 55,000 negative reviews. Since then, with every major update, the number of cumulative positive reviews seemed to climb a little more. As of today, however, No Man's Sky has an 81% positive review rating on Steam, having recently passed the 80% threshold to be considered "Very Positive."The news of No Man's Sky's long-term success after it flopped at launch comes shortly after news that Ubisoft disbanded the development team behind Prince of Persia The Lost Crown just 10 months after its somewhat disappointing commercial performance. In a similar vein, Sony recently axed its newest hero shooter, Concord, mere weeks after launch, due to abysmal reviews and player counts. With No Man's Sky, however, Hello Games sort of proved that a dedicated development team that takes feedback and implements changes can turn things around, even if it takes a while.