Fans have purchased a billboard in Guildford, UK so that they can say thank you to No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games.
No Man’s Sky had a really difficult birth, but since it’s release in 2016, the developer has stuck by their game even after it was lambasted by both players and critics alike. It took them a while, but years later the game is now pretty much everything that it promised it would be: a sprawling, almost infinite universe to explore with tons of things to do and even more to experience.
Fans that have stuck by No Man’s Sky since the beginning are all very appreciative for Hello Games’ hard work. So much so, that some of them have organized a personal “thank you” message.
A GoFundMe was started on June 12th by the r/NoMaksSkyTheGame subreddit. The goal was to raise $1,750 to purchase a 2-week slot on a billboard from August 12th just outside Hello Games’ head office in Guildford. That goal was smashed in a single day and has since raised a total of $3,251.
So that billboard is most definitely going up, with the crowdfunding organizer Cam G accepting emailed suggestions on what the billboard should look like (the ASCII Kirby is mostly there as a placeholder).
The GoFundMe even got the attention of Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray, who tweeted out his amazement yesterday.
The remaining funds will be used to purchase games and consoles for disadvantaged and sick children. Cam G wrote in an update that they’ll be given to a "local special needs school,” and “I'll be posting pictures and maybe a video or two on reddit.com.r/thegiftofgaming."
It's not often that game developers get a personal thank you from fans, but if anybody deserves it, it's definitely Hello Games.
(Please note: it is a complete coincidence that the writer’s name of this article is precisely the same as the founder of Hello Games. The two are completely unrelated. Probably. We haven’t done a genetic test or anything, but we’re pretty sure it’s just a fluke. There’s also an actor named Sean Murray--he’s on NCIS, in case you were wondering.)