No Man’s Sky Unveils New Experimental Branch for February 2025 Release

Hello Games, the creative minds behind No Man’s Sky, have rolled out another exciting update for the game’s Experimental Branch this February 2025. This update brings a host of fixes and improvements, all aimed at enhancing the gaming experience of players. For those who enjoy getting a sneak peek into what’s coming, the Experimental Branch allows players to dive in and test new fixes before they’re officially released. To access this branch, players just need to right-click No Man’s Sky in their Steam library, go to Properties, choose the "BETAS" tab, and enter "3xperimental" into the box. Confirm it by clicking “CHECK CODE,” and then select the appropriate beta from the list.

Since its original launch in August 2016, No Man’s Sky has captivated players by offering a vast, open universe teeming with endless exploration. The game’s core elements—exploration, survival, combat, and trading—are built around an enormous procedurally generated universe with around 18 quintillion planets, each boasting its own ecosystems and alien life forms to discover. Recently, a new hotfix was released alongside the February update, further addressing game crashes and other persistent issues.

In the February 2025 Experimental Branch update, Hello Games addressed various bugs from previous months, like those affecting flora, minerals, and creatures, as well as multiplayer and networking hiccups. Players will notice fixes for ships that lost their custom names after expeditions, adjustments to Exocraft scanners to help them locate buildings, and corrections for a graphics issue in PCVR when altering options.

While many players appreciate Hello Games’ continuous efforts in updating No Man’s Sky for a seamless experience, some are finding the new Titan expedition to be both challenging and thrilling, especially with the dynamic gas giant environments that test their survival skills. Amidst these updates, rumors hint at the possibility of No Man’s Sky making its way to the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, fueled by the Japanese publisher’s announcement in January 2025. Such a port could mean an exciting expansion of the game’s platform presence, potentially coupled with enhanced graphics.

No Man’s Sky Experimental Branch February 2025 Patch Notes

The latest patch notes highlight several fixes that smooth out the game’s minor hitches, ensuring a better player experience:

• Resolved a flickering issue with notification messages in the Hazard Pay milestone during the Titan expedition.
• Fixed the failure of an underwater crashed freighter to appear at the second rendezvous in the Titan expedition.
• Introduced recovery options for players who lost their hyperdrives in the Titan expedition.
• Enhanced Exocraft scanners to reliably locate buildings.
• Addressed repeated dialogues from Specialist Polo and fixed related mission inconsistencies.
• Tackled an issue in the In Stellar Multitudes mission where dissonant planets weren’t recognized.
• Ensured restoration of the first purple star system where problems prevented this previously.
• Corrected a bug that stripped ships and Multi-Tools of their custom names post-expedition.
• Improved UI stability, especially regarding popups during gameplay.
• Fixed a dialogue box color mismatch issue and smoothed language practice’s impact on the game’s frame rate.
• Ensured the learning of the Surge Battery recipe in Abandoned Mode remains uninterrupted.
• Solved a hanging problem when changing graphics settings in PCVR.

With these tweaks, No Man’s Sky continues to enrich its universe, keeping avid space explorers engaged. As players look forward to these updates, they remain hopeful that the game might soon enter new territories, possibly including the much-speculated Nintendo Switch 2.