No Man's Sky Is One of the Lowest Rated Games on Steam

Sci-fi survival game No Man's Sky may have been one of the most hyped titles in recent memory but the game did not live up to expectations from both critics and fans.

While we felt that the promise of an entire galaxy of possibilities was reduced to a shallow husk reminiscent to the many cookie cutter survival games that pepper Steam, it appears that Steam's many users now agree.

According to a post on Reddit, the game is rated as "mostly negative". This is based on 71,382 user reviews. Taking the most recent reviews, which Steam currently pegs at 5,525, the rating slides to be “overwhelmingly negative”. This means that roughly 12 percent of reviews on Steam in the last 30 days are positive while the overall percentage is around 32. 

Being one of the lowest rated games on Steam comes a week after the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) has contacted both developer Hello Games and Valve with questions regarding the game’s advertisements and while the complaints draw attention to Steam, the ASA tells Eurogamer that any ruling would apply to the PlayStation Store listing and other adverts including YouTube videos.

"AzzerUK", the Reddit user who issued a formal complaint to the ASA, told Eurogamer’s Wesley Yin-Poole he isn’t angry with No Man's Sky, Hello Games or Steam, but felt the need to contact the ASA "after seeing just how vastly different the trailers for No Man's Sky were from the actual released game".

For many, No Man's Sky was nowhere close to what Hello Games founder Sean Murray promised it would be. More so with a massive Reddit post detailing missing features (which was deleted later) albeit archived on other sites such as the aptly named One Man's Lie. Despite Sony’s efforts at marketing the game, it couldn’t stop consumers trying to refund it en-masse. Safe to say, the game was a public relations nightmare. And Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida agrees. The President of Sony Worldwide Studios had this to say: 

"I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one. "It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer. But he says their plan is to continue to develop No Man's Sky features and such, and I'm looking forward to continuing to play the game."

We found No Man's Sky to be a repetitive, superficial experience. You can check out our full review here. Or you can listen to our podcast about the game via iTunes or Feedburner or just hit the play button below.