No Man’s Sky Crashing On Launch Due To Corrupt Save Files? Here’s A Fix
No Man’s Sky might not have been the revolutionary new IP that HelloGames were hoping for, but it’s certainly one that avid gamers would want to add to their collection. Problem is, the much-awaited space exploration game also lacks the extra polish that buyers expect from a top-tier title. It can be hard to put up with a game when it fails to deliver an experience free of technical quirks. Said discrepancies aren’t at the core of the game’s underwhelming critical reception, but they’ve definitely played their part in harshing its mellow.
The PC variant of the game, in particular, and as always, took most of the blame in this area, with the console versions mainly suffering from drops in frame rate. If you purchased a copy of No Man’s Sky for your Windows PC shortly after its release, it’s likely you’ve come across at least one of these problems.
One particularly annoying problem that I faced four hours into the game was that it refused to load past the title screen. Because this started after an untimely power outage that caused my desktop system to restart while I was playing the game, I feared that the root cause might be a corrupt save file. As it turned out, unfortunately, I was right.
If your game is suffering from the same symptoms, it is possible the same holds true for you as well. You needn’t fret, though, since there is a solution that won’t end in you starting the game from the very beginning. It’s a simple one, too.
Let’s get started.
1. Launch This PC, switch to the View tab and enable the Hidden items option.
2. Open up your Windows installation directory and navigate to Users > [Your username] > AppData > Roaming > HelloGames > NMS.
3. Open the folder inside to find your save files.
Note: To save some clicks, you may also hit Windows key + R, enter %appdata% and follow the same path (HelloGames > NMS) to your save files.
For Steam users: If you bought the game on Steam, it should have Steam Cloud sync enabled for saves. You’re going to have to temporarily disable the feature before proceeding. Here’s what you need to do:
- Launch Steam and switch to the Library tab.
- Right-click No Man’s Sky and select Properties.
- Switch to the Updates tab and uncheck the Enable Steam synchronization for No Man’s Sky option at the bottom.
- Proceed to step 4.
4. The game seems to store save data in up to three pairs of .hg files. Find the two files with the highest number at the end of their names (storage3.hg and mf_storage3.hg) and simply move them to another location on your drive. You needn’t delete the files until the problem has been solved.
5. Launch the game to check if this solved the problem. The game should load to one save before your last checkpoint (or your “previous restore point,” as the game calls it). If you had been saving at regular intervals, you shouldn’t lose much of your progress.
Note that while this solution worked for me, it may not apply to your particular problem. There’s no harm in trying it, though, seeing as the only other option right now would be to delete the whole folder inside HelloGames > NMS and start over.
