No Man’s Sky Gets Largest Update Yet To Mark 10th Anniversary

One of the most controversial video games of all time turned 10 last month, and if you’ve stuck with No Man’s Sky throughout the last decade then you’ll know that it’s also one of the great comeback stories.

At launch, the procedurally generated sci-fi survival game was a case of overpromising and underdelivering on features. It also just wasn’t a lot of fun to play back in 2016. But developer Hello Games kept working on it, delivering update, after update, after update, and what you play when you boot up No Man’s Sky today is far closer to studio founder Sean Murray’s original vision. Hello Games has today released the Cosmos update, which it calls “the biggest overhaul the No Man’s Sky universe has seen in 10 years.”

The enormous update, which is free to anyone who owns the game, has added new space outposts that you can visit to trade with aliens. Also new are strippable space hulks, asteroid belts and a series of fresh Expeditions that focus on different milestone features that have been added over the last 10 years.

You can now become the director of your very own fully customizable space station, while free-floating orbital bases can be constructed anywhere in space. A base can be the restaurant in the stars you’ve always dreamed of managing, as well as (admittedly less exciting) military bases or truck stops.

No Man’s Sky‘s open-world universe is famously quite large, so the Cosmos update introduces a new interactive star system map that can be used to track points of interest and keep on top of the many systems you’ve visited or want to chart a course for in the future. Rounding it all off are the new galactic alliances, which you can join to meet other players and compete for territory. You’ll create a name and banner for your alliance, and there are ranked leaderboards to ascend for the most active space gangs.

For the full breakdown of the Cosmos update, read through the patch notes here. It’s out today on all platforms.