In a very busy few days for No Man’s Sky news, perhaps the most impactful story has just begun: No Man’s Sky may not have exclusively free DLC after all.
When “pushed” about the possibility of paid DLC by Daily Star (via EGM; Daily Star has NSFW image links), Sean Murray admitted that it was “perhaps naive” to hope for free DLC for No Man’s Sky. Following a literally game-changing, free, day-one patch, this news comes as a bit of a revelation.
This is the man who recently touted upcoming base-building and freighter-owning features to Red Bull, as well as making the declaration that, “We do want to add a ton of features… But we want to do it for free. You’ve paid for the game, so you should get this stuff without paying even more money. So no, there will be no paid DLC, just patches.”
This is also the man who wrote a heartfelt letter to accompany review copies, and who gets excited about bug-fix patches. It doesn’t seem like he’s one to cash in on his fanbase.
Murray’s reasoning about paid DLC, however, is sound: “Maybe in the future there’s some reason why we just couldn’t possibly afford to do a certain feature without charging for it.” This is by no means an indication that there is definitely paid DLC on the horizon, and in many ways, it speaks to Murray’s openness. But it may affect the player in the future, if Hello Games–or Sony–decides monetizing future content is in their best interest.