No Man's Sky Has Already Passed A Major Milestone

Less than 24 hours after the launch of No Man's Sky and the exploration/survival title from Hello Games has already cleared one major milestone. Given how many planets there are and how many people are already playing the game, though, maybe this one shouldn't be such a shocker.

In short, more species of life form were discovered in just a few hours of No Man's Sky going live than are known to exist on planet Earth. Hello Games' Sean Murray made the announcement official via Twitter last night, just one of the examples he said demonstrate how hugely popular No Man's Sky already is.

That's right, over 10 million species have been discovered across the cosmos of No Man's Sky and, as of this writing, that news is already a good 13 hours old. If you've played the game, though, then you likely understand why that stat is, while huge, totally understandable.

In No Man's Sky, everything from the planet you're walking on to the plants and animals that inhabit them are unique. You're likely to find some similar creatures here and there, sure, but everything about those critters is the result of math equations galore.

As a result, everything in the No Man's Sky galaxy is new, meaning players need to "discover" things for them to be uploaded into the game's database. Once you've scanned an alien life form, adding it to the database is as simple as pushing a couple of buttons. If you're the first to find it, which is extremely likely given the size of the game, you even have the option of renaming it. If, for example, you find yourself on the planet Echo in the Eternal XIII galaxy, you might come across a hopping, jiggly little alien now known as a Squiggly Poop. You are welcome.

Anyway, that's just one example of the alien lifeforms I named in my first night with No Man's Sky. In the six hours I played, I probably uploaded a couple dozen critters to the network. Multiply that by the number of people playing the game, and you see why 10 million species in the game's first night seems pretty reasonable.

In a long string of Tweets, Murray said that he and the team were astounded by the number of people playing No Man's Sky, referencing a pair of players who apparently crossed paths in the game, though they could not actually see each other.

Given how much hype was built behind No Man's Sky, it's kind of surprising that Murray added that the player count was more than the team could have predicted. He added that the quality of his coders should be credited for the fact that the Discoveries feature is still working, given how much stuff is being crammed onto it at once. Well, it looks like that feature will continue to be tested as people discover No Man's Sky.