No Man's Sky celebrates ninth anniversary with new, surprisingly fuzzy, aliens

No Man's Sky is the epitome of a feel-good story of game development, a better redemption arc than Boromir. The now-iconic space game was a mess at launch, riddled with bugs and boring gameplay. However, developer Hello Games knuckled down and got to work improving things. After a lot of hard work, the game slowly brought players back on board. Once the base game was interesting, the team started expanding the experience. More vehicles, mechs, aliens, mechanics, bases… more everything, really. No Man's Sky went from being a punchline to a legitimately good game that you can while away hours in without even realising, and now it's celebrating its ninth birthday with some aliens that you can bring into your own home.

The developers listened to player feedback, fixed major problems, and eventually reached a point where No Man's Sky could confidently be called one of the best space games ever made. If you'd have told the developers this nine years ago, days after its disastrous launch, I doubt even they would have believed you.

We're talking about a game with over 18 quintillion planets to explore, each procedurally generated with bright colours and interesting environments. Starfield could learn a thing or two from Hello Games' beautiful, diverse, fun universe.

To celebrate the milestone achievement, Hello Games has released two plushes based on alien races from the game.

The alien races immortalized in soft, cuddly form are the Gek and Travellers. As the world's #1 Gek fan, that pleases me greatly. What is less pleasing is the fact that these are only pre-orders, which aim to ship in December 2025. Can I wait four months for a 9″ tall beaked buddy? Yes. Do I want to? No.

No Man's Sky's Gek and Traveller plushies are available to pre-order now for $29.99 each. You can buy them from online store youtooz.

If plushies aren't your thing, or you're biding your time until yours arrives, check out some of the best open-world games for a similar experience to No Man's Sky. Alternatively, some of the best RPG games might scratch that same itch.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We also have a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.