There’s just no escaping No Man’s Sky. Whether you love the game or hate it, nearly everyone seemingly has a passionate opinion about this long-awaited game that allows you explore an almost infinite universe in pursuit of adventure.
Well, everyone but PC players, that is. Of course, that’s only because most of them aren’t able to play it.
No Man’s Sky released on PC today and has already garnered the scorn of nearly everyone that’s tried to play it. Currently, the game has over 13,000 reviews on Steam and is classified under the “negative” rating category due to the simple fact that the majority of PC users are not able to get the game to run properly if it runs at all.
What’s the problem? It’s hard to say for sure. The basic issue seems to be that the PC version of No Man’s Sky is incredibly poorly optimized and requires a high-end machine to even load properly. Almost everyone that tries to run the game on a computer that meets, or even barely exceeds, the title’s minimum requirements are simply unable to do anything without the game crashing.
Interestingly enough, even users with high-end gaming computers are reporting that No Man’s Sky chugs along at a nearly unplayable framerate during hectic moments and is devoid of many of the visual customization options found in most major PC games. As a final insult, basic in-game options such as the ability to customize controls to mouse and keyboard are plagued by bugs that fail to either update the game’s on-screen interface or simply don’t register the changes at all.
No Man’s Sky’s creator Sean Murray has taken to Twitter to offer suggestions as to why this is happening (everything from server overload to outdated drivers), but each of them comes across as little more than a desperate excuse meant to disguise a problem that shouldn’t exist.
Even though No Man’s Sky was primarily designed as a PS4 game, the developer’s announcement that they would be bringing the highly-anticipated title to PC should have been a declaration that they were ready to develop a proper PC game. Instead, what gamers got is yet another example of a developer perfectly willing to take the extra revenue that comes from the PC market, but unwilling to ensure that their title is able to function on even a basic level before release.
No Man’s Sky may have attracted some criticism if the developers had chosen to delay its PC release yet again, but it would have been nothing compared to the criticism the game is receiving right now for being nearly unplayable. The title’s controversial design is already splitting the gaming world into two, but on the subject of No Man’s Sky’s PC version, there can be no debate that there is no excuse good enough to explain why this game was released in the state it is in beyond the simple truth that it was done for quick money.
