More at the link

The team at Hello Games built their dream game, and now they want to help struggling creators who are trying to do the same thing.

The indie studio behind the sci-fi game No Man’s Sky recently created Hello Labs, a new division of the company that provides funding to developers working on procedurally generated games. In short, procedural generation is a technique that randomizes particular elements of a game in the hopes of making it feel fresh and unique. For No Man’s Sky, that kind of technology made it possible for a small team to build a universe with 18 quintillion planets that players can explore.

...

After encouraging developers in the audience to apply for jobs at Hello Games, he extended a helping hand to those who’d rather strike out on their own.

“But let’s say you’re interested in working on that kind of [game], but you also want to start up and do your own thing, then we’re gonna try and help with that as well,” said Murray. “We’re starting this thing. It’s super low-key at the moment — it’s Hello Labs. We’re gonna try to fund and support a couple of projects. There’s one already in development. And the focus is going to be on procedural generation, experimental games, games research, that kind of thing. More details will follow.”

http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/09/why-no-mans-skys-creators-are-funding-other-game-studios/

How much money did they get anyways?
I think the question is more with that much money, why can't they follow thru on their own promises re: NMS?
I mean, ignore their failings at launch, they still aren't really close to those now despite updates.
In the article he bemoans difficulties of running out of $ during dev, yet now having made boatloads he still can't deliver.

So the fact they are investing in other games seems logical outcome of being unable to pull off dev goals themselves.
Hope the same attitude doesn't carry over the people whose games they end up funding.
There is a place for experimental development, but academia is a better forum for that than conning kids who want real games.

I think it's pretty obvious what happened here.

They were out of their debt. They didn't deliver but at the same time they made way more money than they ever could have imagined.

Having said that this new venture is a neat thing to do. Hope they fund the right projects though.

Wrong thread

Because now they have money and can pay other people to do actually good games?

NMS is a great game so they've certainly got the credentials.

Suuuuuuuuureeeeeee it is.

It is. Whether you believe it or not doesn't really make any difference to anyone but yourself. It's got a great community too.

Everything has a great community somewhere, doesn't change that it's probably the game on Steam which most buyers on average were unhappy with.

That is truly not a sign of a great game. Well, except for that community^^

I would agree if NMS launched with all the stuff from the 1.2 update, but it didn't. The game was grossly overhyped and didn't meet expectations hence why many consumers were left dissatisfied.