The handheld update for *No Man’s Sky* is just too difficult! Optimization actually takes 3 times more effort

To start with the conclusion: I have even more respect for the No Man’s Sky team now. A lot of people only notice that the updates are becoming more frequent, but they don’t see how troublesome handheld adaptation really is. It’s like the four of us in the dorm agreeing to squad up for a gaming session, only for one old machine to always disconnect first. In the end, the most exhausted person is always the one fixing the computers, haha.

This news comes from Hello Games senior programmer Martin Griffiths. He recently mentioned on social media that in order to keep No Man’s Sky running smoothly after updates on Steam Deck, Switch, and Switch 2, the team has to spend far more time than on other platforms. According to him, every update for mobile platforms usually requires 2 to 3 times more effort than other platforms in terms of adaptation and optimization.

That figure is actually pretty staggering, because No Man’s Sky is not the kind of game that ships and then coasts. It went from a disastrous reception at launch in 2016 to gradually winning back player goodwill through wave after wave of free major updates. That path was already tough to begin with. Now the content keeps piling up, and they still have to account for the handheld experience. To put it bluntly, it’s like expanding a dorm room while also making sure the door never gets stuck. The difficulty level is maxed out.

And the official goal is not just “playable is good enough,” but to make the experience on the original Switch, Switch 2, and Steam Deck as consistent as possible with other consoles as well as PC and Mac. That is crucial, because what handheld players fear most is not slightly worse graphics, but updates that bring stuttering, frame drops, or slow loading. That feeling is genuinely frustrating. Especially for someone like me, who cares more about playing together, if your friends are already flying through space while you’re still spinning in place waiting for the game to load locally, the social experience falls apart instantly.

What’s even more outrageous is that Martin Griffiths also mentioned that the team has to keep pushing past extremely strict memory limits just to keep this ever-expanding game running. Just hearing about that is enough to make your head hurt. It’s like trying to force a keyboard into a backpack that’s already stuffed with snacks and textbooks. Being able to take care of old platforms, handheld platforms, and new platforms all at once is definitely not something that can be solved by simply adding a patch.

From an industry perspective, this is also pretty representative. More and more players now expect a game to switch seamlessly between the living room, the computer desk, and handheld devices, but the cost development teams have to pay for that kind of “play anytime, anywhere” experience is clearly much higher than most people imagine. The handheld market may look lively on the surface, but behind it lies a huge amount of adaptation, compression, and performance trade-offs. Not every studio can sustain that for the long term.

If you were already thinking about getting into No Man’s Sky, my advice is very simple: if you like the portable experience, Steam Deck and the Switch family are certainly appealing, but what you should value even more is the developer’s ability to keep supporting the game afterward. What has been most valuable about Hello Games over the years is not just that they brought the game back from the brink, but that they have been willing to keep patching, keep fixing, and keep pursuing platform consistency. For veteran players, that brings peace of mind; for new players, that matters more than any short-lived sense of novelty.

At the end of the day, No Man’s Sky got from a trainwreck to where it is today not because of one sudden breakout, but because of long-term updates and continuous refinement. Now they are even willing to spend 2 to 3 times more effort on the handheld versions just to maintain a unified experience. That attitude is more convincing than a lot of flashy marketing. At least my first reaction after reading this was: the next time my roommate asks me whether this game is any good now, I’ll say yes—and these people are genuinely putting in the work.