No Man's Sky discoveries are reportedly being erased for some players revisiting planets

As one of the most highly-anticipated games of 2016, one of the most touted features of Hello Games' space adventure No Man's Sky was its stunning near-infinite, procedurally generated universe that sports some 18 quintillion planets just waiting to be discovered and explored. Some players are now reporting that their animals, plants and other discoveries logged in the journal are systematically being erased.

When Reddit user Dark_Nexis decided to return to some of the planets discovered earlier in the game, the player claimed all the custom names logged for creatures, plants and locations had vanished. While the planet and star system still had their custom names and mentioned Dark_Nexis as its discoverer, none of the discoveries made within the planet remained.

"I check a few neighboring stars I discovered and their [discoveries] were wiped," Dark_Nexis wrote in a post on No Man's Sky subreddit. "So none of my named animals [or] plants were ever saved."

Another Reddit user, Ultrasilvanus, also reported the same issue saying that when they visited their starting planet, animals and players discovered seemed to be listed as "?????????" The player also noted that when they returned to a planet that was in the process of being "corrupted," they found only three waypoints and just three of the nine animal species discovered.

"I memorized the planet, and went on playing and discovering new stuff," Ultrasilvanus wrote. "The next day, browsed the list again. The planet was wiped clean and so were a couple more." The user also reported that the discoveries seemed to be systematically erased in chronological order, beginning with a player's first discoveries.

Dark_Nexis updated his original post earlier today saying that after re-downloading and reloading the game several times, his discoveries seemed to reappear.

"I don't know what happened but all the discoveries re-appeared on my starting planet," the user wrote. "It seems like a server bugs, like it takes a while for your old discoveries to re-download... It seems a little bugged where you get further and further away from your starting point [and] you can't see your old discoveries even when you find your way back. It's like the server lags behind big time and takes a while to find the old information."

In an email to PCGamer, the user said the server could just be a server glitch.

"It seems like the server just lags behind and maybe hides older discoveries to help with loading in the star systems/discoveries menu," Dark_Nexis wrote. "I was only about 40k away from the center when I decided to turn around and go back. I jumped 92 times and went through a lot of black holes so it took me a long time to get back so the server probably just had to find that old data and reload it in my game."

IBTimes UK has reached out to Hello Games for a comment.

Since its launch, No Man's Sky has been experiencing multiple technical issues, particularly on PC, which the development team has been working hard to address and fix through various patches.

After skyrocketing to the top of the UK charts in its first week, No Man's Sky sales recently began to plummet by 81% in the second week. The situation, however, is not as dire as it seems given the fact that Naughty Dog's Uncharted 4 sales also dropped by 78% after its May release.

Hello Games is currently working to address all of the customer requests received so far after which the team will focus on "improving and adding features to the game," Hello Games founder and creative director Sean Murray said previously.

No Man's Sky is available now for PC and PS4.