No Man's Sky got a big new patch titled the Swarm Update, and it's one of the game's biggest post-launch content releases yet. While No Man's Sky has received plenty of massive updates over the years, few of them have been as comprehensive and broadly game-changing as the Swarm Update is, with its Hive of Glass enemy faction and community-level event contributions.
No Man's Sky's recent creature-fighting update focused, for example, on adding an all-new mini-game to the exploration sandbox, which is interesting in its own right but hardly a gameplay-defining item. Over the years, Hello Games has produced a series of content updates both big and small, and the latest Swarm Update certainly falls into the latter category with a whole new gameplay and progression loop that all players can participate in.
No Man’s Sky Player Count is Way Up
Following the Voyagers update for No Man's Sky, the popular space-faring title has seen a surge of players check out the new content.
No Man's Sky's New Swarm Update Adds Hive of Glass, Cosmetics, War Effort, Player Factions, and More
Hello Games' No Man's Sky hasn't missed a beat over the past couple of years, with big content updates releasing at a remarkably steady pace. The April 2026 No Man's Sky update pales in comparison to the new Swarm Update, however, featuring the first-ever galactic-scale threat to the game's universe. The Hive of Glass will take both strategy and combat aptitude for players to deal with on a server-wide scale, as the new time-limited campaign is set to deliver a challenge Hello Games hasn't attempted before. The rewards will be the snazzy Direwasp Armor and Flightpack, as well as the Direwasp Disintegrator rifle.
Another notable addition is the introduction of player factions to the game. No Man's Sky has always emphasized community and server-spanning objectives, but never by letting players actively take sides in a given conflict. The Swarm update lets players choose whether they wish to join the Weaver, Royal, or Sage factions to progress the galactic efforts against the Hive of Glass, and though everyone is still working towards the same goal, this may be setting the stage for opposing forces later down the line. For example, the Swarm Update is built to leverage some of the features and elements introduced in No Man's Sky's Remnant update, like salvage mechanics and the Gravity Gun, so it's likely that player factions will be used in future updates as well.
Scratch & Peek
Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.
Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as possible.
No Man's Sky's player counts have been up for the last year or so, following the release of the excellent Voyagers Update. At the time, the game's Steam concurrent player number spiked to over 110,000, and though it has dropped since, the averages are higher than they were before. This speaks to Hello Game's dedication to building the game up over time, following the clumsy 2016 1.0 release.
A similar approach may be taken for the upcoming release of Light No Fire, which is a fantasy take on the same concept as No Man's Sky and Hello Games' next flagship project. The studio has built up a lot of player goodwill over the past decade of work, and though its games aren't for everyone, it does have a dedicated audience that keeps getting more content for free than most other games ever receive.
No Man's Sky
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 71/100 Critics Rec: 37%
- Released
- August 9, 2016
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Fantasy Violence, Animated Blood
- Developer(s)
- Hello Games
- Publisher(s)
- Hello Games
