No Man's Sky Worth It? $23.99 at 60% Off Until Nov 9

Steam's 60% cut ends Monday, November 9 at 18:00 UTC, but the better price is not on Steam today. A Global key on Eneba was $15.32 when we checked.

What	Your time (UTC)	UTC	US Eastern	US Pacific	UK
Steam 60% deal on No Man's Sky ends	Mon, Nov 9 6:00 PM	Mon, Nov 9 18:00	Mon, Nov 9 1:00 PM	Mon, Nov 9 10:00 AM	Mon, Nov 9 6:00 PM

We have not played it. This is a read of Steam's store page, Hello Games' announcements and the Steam reviews quoted below, each linked and dated. Steam shows 82% positive over 187,670 English reviews and 91% of 1,973 from the last 30 days, read on November 8.

Screenshot: Steam store page (Hello Games)

What it costs, and where the cheaper key is

Skip the Steam price if you are fine with a key. The Eneba Global key is cheaper than Steam's 60% cut by about 36%.

If you do not buy before the timer, the next storewide Steam sale is the Winter Sale from December 17, and what Steam did in October is in our Autumn Sale roundup. We did not check how No Man's Sky itself was priced then.

GODEEPER: Waiting for a bigger cut? When Is the Next Steam Sale? 2026 Calendar →

BESTPRICE: Want No Man's Sky? Eneba sells a Steam key: Buy on Eneba →

From "disaster" to a Steam score of 82%

The comeback story is the main reason people buy this, and the reviews tell it well. Yorven, April 25, 2021, 191.7 hours in, wrote that the game "has changed SO much from its disastrous launch back in 2016" and that Hello Games spent nearly five years "releasing free update after free update".

Lucian, May 29, 2021, 30.8 hours in at the time, is the best example of the arc. They pre-ordered at launch, played 30 hours, were "just disappointed", ignored every update, then tried it again with their gaming group and called it "very, very special".

The fan version is shorter. ItsJustGeoBaby, August 16, 2024, 5.2 hours in: "I can't believe this game is finally worth the money."

Hello Games' own ten-year post says the same thing in numbers: 40 major updates, all free, and players have explored "less than 1%" of the planets.

Screenshot: Steam store page (Hello Games)

What the last two updates added

If you last played before September, two big updates changed the game. COSMOS (7.0) arrived on September 9 and rebuilt space: a star map, salvageable space hulks, asteroid belts, free-floating orbital bases, and, in Hello Games' words, the most requested feature since launch: you can finally buy the space station and decorate it.

FORSAKEN followed on October 28. It adds haunted tech and biological horrors to hunt in derelict hulks and wrecks, traders who swap them for biomechanical corvette modules, new cockpits, postal missions, a radial weapon menu, a minimal HUD mode and seamless warping to nearby stars. It also brought the game to iPhone and iPad.

GamingOnLinux and PlayGround.ru covered FORSAKEN within a day, and their headlines name the same seamless warping, cockpits, traders and corvette modules.

The counter-case: a slow start and crashes

The negatives cluster in two places. The first is the opening. Voice4Rent, November 7, five hours in: "We're 5 hours in, STILL doing the tutorial that lets you go INTO SPACE, IN A SPACE GAME." They describe every tutorial step as a fetch quest on foot, because fuel is too expensive at first, and says base building feels like "an ABSOLUTE afterthought". Bensy, November 5, after a session of mining and farming: "very slow and very boring".

The second is stability since COSMOS. JXA256, November 6, 353.0 hours at review time, wrote that after COSMOS and FORSAKEN "the game has been crashing constantly", and says they cannot play more than 30 minutes without a crash. They play on a laptop with integrated graphics.

red_mask, November 5, calls the game a "crash king", says it crashes when warping, and warns that a crash can cost you the whole session's progress. Their advice: fine with a high-end PC, not with low or mid-range.

Saint_Piss, November 7 lost progress twice to crashes. That is three recent players describing the same problem. We cannot tell from reviews whether Hello Games has acknowledged it, and we saw no hotfix post in Steam's news feed after the FORSAKEN announcement on October 28.

Screenshot: Steam store page (Hello Games)

Is it still fun after 100 hours?

Both sides agree that the game is a canvas, and disagree about whether the canvas holds you. xwsuper, November 7, calls it "a liminal, almost hypnotic dream" with "the same infinite sense of exploration" as Minecraft. Kurbrim, November 5, 240.7 hours at review time, says they keep coming back "when new stuff lands" but still voted not to recommend it, because the game "slowly dies off".

That rhythm shows in the player chart. SteamCharts has the last 30 days averaging 13,285 players with a peak of 26,145, against 23,598 in September, the month COSMOS launched, and 14,947 in October. The all-time peak is 212,321. The crowd jumps with a big update and then drifts back down.

Our reading: buy this as a game you return to after each update, not one you finish. At $15.32 that is a good deal for a hobby sandbox; at $59.99 it would not be.

PC details: specs, Deck and co-op

Source: Steam store page, checked November 8, 2026. Steam lists no recommended spec.

The minimum is low, and of the crash reports above only JXA256 names weak hardware (a laptop with integrated graphics), so treat the 1060 line as a floor, not a plan. On Steam Deck, Valve rates it Verified and says the default configuration is performant. We have not tested it. The store page also lists co-op and VR support, plus a Mac version; Yorven's review invites players to "toss down a portal and invite your friends".

GODEEPER: Same kind of purchase, different engine: Sons of the Forest worth-it check →

If you like the shape of this purchase, our worth-it checks on Mycopunk, Planet Zoo 2 and Loftia cover other games you might weigh, and for Deck write-ups of other games see our Moonlighter 2 test and Over the Hill's Deck notes.

Our call: who should buy

Buy at $15.32 (or $23.99 on Steam before the deal ends) if you want to explore at your own pace, build bases and come back when Hello Games adds something. The reason is the shape of the praise: the positive reviews are about freedom and a decade of free updates, and you get both for the price of a lunch.

Skip it if your patience for a tutorial of walking and fetch quests is low, or if a crash that can eat a session sounds like a deal breaker. If you do buy, spend your first hours with a friend or a guide rather than alone in the tutorial.

Short version: take the key, not the retail price, and give it a second evening before judging it.

What we don't know

We did not play No Man's Sky, test the Steam Deck or reproduce the crashes. We have not confirmed what the game cost in previous sales, whether Hello Games has acknowledged the post-COSMOS crashes, or what the price will be after Monday's timer ends.

References

1. No Man's Sky on Steam, Steam
2. Introducing No Man's Sky: FORSAKEN, Hello Games
3. No Man's Sky COSMOS (7.0), Hello Games
4. Celebrating 10 Years of No Man's Sky, Hello Games
5. No Man's Sky official site, Hello Games
6. No Man's Sky Steam Key, Eneba, Eneba
7. No Man's Sky on SteamCharts, SteamCharts
8. Steam upcoming events, Valve