No Man’s Sky gets a huge surge of users thanks to Starfield effect

Starfield’s launch has been wonderful for Bethesda, but it also appears that it’s having a positive effect on other space exploration games like No Man’s Sky.

According to the website Steamcharts, Hello Games 2016’s offering has seen a surge of popularity that correlates nicely with the release of Starfield, with the game enjoying an increase of just over 50% of players within the past month, which includes a couple of major spikes around Starfield’s own launch. This includes a bump from 18K to almost 30K over Starfield’s early access weekend, and a slightly smaller spike when the full game launched on Tuesday.

The two games have a lot in common of course, with their focus on space exploration, the ability to customise your ships in both games and plenty of scanning and cataloguing the various space creatures and fauna during your adventures. Perhaps many of those who didn’t fancy paying for the Starfield Premium Edition upgrade were saving money by taking flight in Hello Games’ offering – although we do stress they are very different games.

Of course, another factor is that No Man’s Sky recently got another of its wonderfully packed updates recently. At the tail end of August, No Man’s Sky welcomed its Echoes update, which added freighter battles, customisable staff, an entire new robotic race and a bunch of additional story, further expanding the game far beyond where it started almost 8 years ago. It’s not known how long Bethesda will be supporting Starfield for, but with The Elder Scrolls 6 still likely to be some way off, fans of both games are hoping for plenty more updates to expand both No Man’s Sky and Starfield in the coming months and years.

For more on the game, check out our Starfield how to repair ship guide. Alternatively, here’s our advice for taking some sweet pics in our guide to the Starfield photo mode.

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