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No Man's Sky Saves Won't Work After Pre-Launch Patch
If you happen to have a copy of No Man's Sky early, consider whatever you play now to be a practice run. Your save isn't going to make it all the way to Tuesday.
Sony has issued a statement on copies obtained from retailers who have broken the street date. "For those users who have obtained early copies of No Man’s Sky, their save progress will not carry over to the final game after the universe has been regenerated for launch," Sony says.
The company says that the "significant" patch coming between now and Tuesday, that will fully realize the vision laid out by the studio from the beginning. For that reason, as we've already mentioned, review copies have not been sent. The patch will be deployed on Monday, cutting it close for the game's release. Prior to that, servers will be wiped at the end of the weekend.
Hello Games founder Sean Murray has been taking to Twitter for the past few days to implore people to wait just a bit longer. Most recently, he put a fine point on the magnitude of the coming patch.
If you are reviewing/playing our game without our update, on a leaked copy, then please don't. It's not what players will experience.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) August 6, 2016
The embargo for reviews and streaming is 9 p.m. Pacific on Monday night (12 a.m. Eastern on launch day, August 9). We'll be streaming the game all day on Tuesday. The PC version will be out on Friday, August 12.
Our Take
While the big furor right now is about broken street dates, this is a key moment to look at the impact of patches that arrive so close to launch. Some of them are simple polishing efforts and minor bug fixing. This one seems to be on a whole new level.
Except in extremely rare instances, we've stopped reporting "gone gold" stories. The term has lost its meaning in a connected gaming world. We used to celebrate a game reaching it's final form as the "gold master" disc was created to generate retail copies. That's not how it works anymore.
Release dates for retail games are hard to move. Gamers are tolerant of delays, but not mere days before launch. Patching makes a lot of sense after the core of the game is put on disc. But in this situation, we see the true cost to vision and crucial first impressions that significant post-gold, pre-release patching can take.
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