I think they could have sunset NMS development like 2 years ago and it still would be considered a damn good open world universe exploration game.

And think of what it means to the devs from beginning to end. It went from something lame and not very substantial, a shallow experience, to something far deeper and far vaster than anyone (even the developers themselves) could’ve imagined.

Obviously there are still a few grating issues with the game (we need an Origins 2 update, seriously, planet and creature variety would help a lot, I’m tired of seeing the same deers and teddy bears and tigers on every planet) but I think that if NMS free update support were to ever end, it would’ve happened a year or so ago.

And of course you can make the argument “Bro wtf are you saying, it’s a company, they make choices based on their wallets not their hearts” and yeah, for most companies I think that’s true but HG is different because of the intense emotional journey most of them have gone through regarding the creation, development, and ongoing support of NMS from its dumpster fire beginning to its current celebrated engoodening.

Another notion to consider: No Man’s Sky doesn’t have super massive content updates. You can just read a patch note one day and see that they implemented a new storyline where you can create and adopt your own little Sentinel buddy and also rework your Minotaur mech. Like sure, from a coding/programming/dev standpoint it IS complex, I’m not denying that, but it’s not nearly as involved as a whole expansion. My point is that Hello Games deliberately keeps their scope low when it comes to expanding on No Man’s Sky, and because of that, in addition to the passion that most of them probably feel for the game, I highly doubt that long-term support for NMS will end any time soon.

But I can be wrong, I’ve certainly been wrong before. However, even if NMS free update support DOES end, it’s going to end on an incredibly high note. They’re not going to just drop it. They’ll drop a banger of a final update that will keep us sated for years. I don’t think they’ll let it go without a “cherry on top”, so to speak.