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Comment by claudiulodro | Hacker News Reader

It is wild how much content the team has continued to add years and years after the launch and without even making any of it paid DLC. The commitment is super impressive, and I applaud them for it, but I am curious how the economics of it work. Is there a wave of people that buy the game when these huge updates are released? How is it possible to keep building this long for a game that is a one time purchase?

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Besides all the revenue from things like Game Pass or PS+, I think the long game is building a game engine for procedurally generated games.

They're working on a fantasy title too (https://lightnofire.com/) which uses the same engine to build a whole planet, but Earth scale.

Improvements in the engine for one, translate to the other.

Man, its too much effort to explore this actual Earth and see as much as possible. I can't even fathom the energy and commitment needed to explore a virtual Earth like planet however awesome it sounds. How do you guys stay committed to something like this?

I tend to play games with high commitment like these in a binge for a few weeks or a month, playing it for maybe hours a day (a night actually because of the kiddos) until I've basically done everything fun the game has to offer, then I stop. Sometimes I play again a few years later in a similar way, then stop again. Recent games I've played like this include Rust, Project Zomboid, and Timberborn.

Seeing as much of a virtual planet as possible costs $60 and it uses the same energy that isn't being used because the other thing costs thousands of dollars.

Depending on how they do it, and how many people they need working on it, it might only need to keep a relatively small trickle of new sales going.

It also now marks it as a "great value" so people are more likely to pick it up even if they don't end up playing.

Depending on pricing, you can even just sell to people upgrading or changing consoles (this is one area that really helps Stardew Valley, albeit with a low cost).

After all, even if you've sold millions of copies, there's way more people who have NOT bought it.

New purchasers, subscription products like Game Pass...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky#Sales

> After the game was added to the Xbox Game Pass service in June 2020, Hello Games reported a month later that No Man's Sky had seen more than one million new players.

The game has actually consistently been on Steam’s yearly top seller list for many years.

It’s surprising to see its continued popularity and development. In a good way of course!

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