I've never bounced harder off a Bethesda game than Starfield — and the Steam data shows I'm not alone
Stats show that PC players are quickly tiring of the most-anticipated game of the year, and I know exactly how they feel
My former colleague Roland Moore-Colyer likes Bethesda’s latest title a fair bit more than me, and I get where he’s coming from… to an extent. In his excellent Starfield review, my old boss described Bethesda’s sweeping sci-fi adventure as “the apex of Bethesda’s open-world games and a killer Xbox Series X and PC game, giving players a slice of galaxy to explore, exploit, raid and wander for ages.”
Before I go to town dunking on the biggest Xbox exclusive of the year, let me make a few things clear. First off, as you can see from the paragraph above, this is in no way Tom's Guide's official Starfield review, merely my own personal take on the time I've spent with the game. I'm also in no way either a Bethesda or Xbox 'hater'. I adored Skyrim and I literally used to pay the bills working for the UK's (sadly defunct) Official Xbox Magazine.
So with that cleared up, let's get back to it. I think Starfield is a perfectly okay game. Albeit with a heavy emphasis on the ‘okay.' It’s the video game equivalent of a big dollop of intergalactic vanilla ice cream. Translation: it’s utterly unobjectionable. But who the hell goes for vanilla when you can have raspberry ripple?
Fundamentally, I don’t overly disagree with any of the points Roland makes in that statement. I think the scope of the game is certainly admirable, and there’s no denying the Xbox ecosystem needed such a big hitter when PS5 has been slaying it with exclusives like Horizon Forbidden West, Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and the recently released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
I’m not sure the “wander for ages” is all that much of a selling point in my book, though. I’ve probably clocked up around a dozen hours in Starfield at this point, and there’s definitely been a whole lot of wandering. Trouble is, I’ve found it to be largely aimless. And most of it has involved ambling around procedurally generated planets that look roughly as interesting as gigantic bowls of celery soup.
I’ve killed some big space bugs that look like they’ve come straight from the set of Starship Troopers, I’ve merced a bunch of space pirates during surprisingly decent firefights and I’ve… ugh, jumped around a big city that I can’t remember the name of a lot purely because the jetpack is a hoot to use.
Lost in space
But my two abiding Starfield memories don’t paint the action-RPG in a flattering light. The first is that truly awful opening. When a game promises you literally thousands of planets to explore, then forces you to play the role of a sci-fi miner as you potter around a dreary network of caves, something has gone awry.
In a parallel universe, it would be like the movie equivalent of Spielberg deciding to open Raiders of the Lost Ark not with that incredible setpiece full of spike traps, spiders and that boulder, but with Indy meticulously going over his students’ archaeology homework.
Compared to Skyrim’s electrifying “Am I about to get my head chopped off? Oh no wait, here’s a dragon to save the day by burning my enemies alive," it’s a stinker of an opener. Add in the fact those caves look so horribly washed out due to Starfield’s questionable HDR implementation, and it’s like the game actively goes out of its way to make the worst first impression it possibly can.
My other lasting memory from Starfield? Painfully fiddling about with the camera in tiny increments so I could look at juuuust the right gap of a glass exhibit that, if you get the finicky technique right, means you can nab the excellent Mark 1 Spacesuit from the Lodge in New Atlantis without any lockpicking skills. As memorable moments go, it ain’t exactly up there with BioShock’s “would you kindly…” monocle-dropping twist.
So yeah, Starfield is a bit dull and its opening hours have caused me to bounce off it hard. And I’m not the only one. A cursory overview of some Steam Charts stats don’t paint a pretty picture for the game’s long-term player base going forward. Certainly not on PC, at least.
At time of writing, Starfield’s concurrent peak number of players over the last 24 hours is 47,455. It’s all time peak — and bear in mind the game has only been out for a little over a month at this point — is 330,597. That’s quite the drop off.
Delving deeper into the numbers, the peak number of players over the last 30 days is 187,094, which represents almost a 50% decrease in the amount of players diving into Starfield on Steam on a daily basis compared to nearer its launch window.
Running out of Steam
To put those already daming figures into a wider context, over the same period, Cyberpunk 2077’s peak number of daily players hit 273,990 — no doubt thanks to its excellent Phantom Liberty DLC. While recent RPG smash Baldur’s Gate 3 can boast a whopping high of 389,351 peak players during the last month.
It might be a slight overstatement to say Starfield’s Steam community is sinking like a certain ship after it got too intimate with a giant block of ice. Yet the numbers paint a picture of alarming decline considering this is still a new game, and certainly the most high-profile one of the year.
Can Starfield bounce back and find a new lease of life through canny tweaks and generous expansions ala No Man’s Sky? Absolutely. For a game that rode the hype train quite like any other in recent memory, I hope Bethesda keeps supporting its cosmic quest with new content to keep those previously highlighted numbers from truly dropping off a cliff.
My slight concern is the megaton studio’s attention will now almost entirely shift to The Elder Scrolls 6, leaving less room for Bethesda to focus on feeding Starfield the fresh content it will need to keep players wriggling on its space hook as time passes.
It’s somewhat reassuring that the developer is working on at least one major expansion (called Shattered Space), but it’s unclear when this piece of DLC will launch.
If my faltering Starfield attention span (alongside those concerning Steam stats) are anything to go by, I worry many interstellar explorers will have ventured onto pastures new by the time it comes out, never to return.
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Dave is a computing editor at Tom’s Guide and covers everything from cutting edge laptops to ultrawide monitors. When he’s not worrying about dead pixels, Dave enjoys regularly rebuilding his PC for absolutely no reason at all. In a previous life, he worked as a video game journalist for 15 years, with bylines across GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and TechRadar. Despite owning a graphics card that costs roughly the same as your average used car, he still enjoys gaming on the go and is regularly glued to his Switch. Away from tech, most of Dave’s time is taken up by walking his husky, buying new TVs at an embarrassing rate and obsessing over his beloved Arsenal.
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NerillDP I've enjoyed bethesda games for decades. But I haven't bought SF yet, nor had I intended to. The long delays, the ever-changing start date, the hype piled on hype, to me, meant what I expected to happen exactly happened: there was no way the game, at onset, could live up to the promises. My intention, with this game, was to wait for the inevitable patches (from the current alpha testing), for the clever modders to build the game AND for the price to drop. Almost seems like we've been here before (*cough-cough* NMS), huge hype, "you MUST prepay to be first in line - in case the digital copies run out? - then reality. I waited then too, to finally buy a cheaper, better game.Reply
SF will and must get better. Even then, to attract new buyers like me, they will lower the price. It's not like we all have nothing left in our libraries. I've got several games to finish and even a few I haven't started while I wait.
I hope people can learn a lesson here. Mainly, what is the point of prepaying for something that is only promises. Even kickstarter has a functioning product. Are there others like me who have decided to wait?
I will buy the game as I know it will get better - you gotta fill the collection, but I will only fill it at the right quality and at a reasonable price. -
Adapheon
The hype around Starfield has been pretty much on par with every other TES/FO game that Bethesda's put out since Morrowind. If you've played the games for decades and didn't notice the hype machine around those releases, you weren't paying attention.NerillDP said:I've enjoyed bethesda games for decades. But I haven't bought SF yet, nor had I intended to. The long delays, the ever-changing start date, the hype piled on hype, to me, meant what I expected to happen exactly happened: there was no way the game, at onset, could live up to the promises. My intention, with this game, was to wait for the inevitable patches (from the current alpha testing), for the clever modders to build the game AND for the price to drop. Almost seems like we've been here before (*cough-cough* NMS), huge hype, "you MUST prepay to be first in line - in case the digital copies run out? - then reality. I waited then too, to finally buy a cheaper, better game.
SF will and must get better. Even then, to attract new buyers like me, they will lower the price. It's not like we all have nothing left in our libraries. I've got several games to finish and even a few I haven't started while I wait.
I hope people can learn a lesson here. Mainly, what is the point of prepaying for something that is only promises. Even kickstarter has a functioning product. Are there others like me who have decided to wait?
I will buy the game as I know it will get better - you gotta fill the collection, but I will only fill it at the right quality and at a reasonable price.
But Morrowind when it came out? Buggy mess. Oblivion? Buggy mess. Skyrim? I think you get where I'm going. Hell, SF is the most polished launch game that Bethesda has ever released, it just not that good of a game (I'd argue the same of every vanilla game release in the TES/FO series too).
The reason I dropped off is MS "giving" me the game for free through Game Pass and then locking down the game files so that I can't enjoy the game via the modding community since the scripting add-ons don't work with it. I know it's the same for the other Bethesda releases through Game Pass, but I only found that out after starting SF.
Not to mention the performance isn't great. Currently trying to help my friend get better than 50fps at 1080p with a 5800X/RX 6750 combo while settings are low or medium. -
NerillDP Good summary of the current gaming world.Reply
BTW, where did you get the expression that I've "... played the games for decades and didn't notice the hype machine around those releases, you weren't paying attention..." I kinda thought what I wrote suggested the alternative.
Anyway, I didn't know game-pass nerfed their games to disallow mods. Thanks for that. I've never been enticed to get a pass and now I sure won't: modding games is the only way I'll play, for the reasons you described. Great public service. -
Adapheon
I read your inclusion of NMS without referencing prior Bethesda releases as giving a pass to their terrible release practices; so my bad if that wasn't your intent. SF at least isn't a broken mess of a game, and if you enjoy the game as it is, then it is, from my experience, very playable.NerillDP said:Good summary of the current gaming world.
BTW, where did you get the expression that I've "... played the games for decades and didn't notice the hype machine around those releases, you weren't paying attention..." I kinda thought what I wrote suggested the alternative.
Anyway, I didn't know game-pass nerfed their games to disallow mods. Thanks for that. I've never been enticed to get a pass and now I sure won't: modding games is the only way I'll play, for the reasons you described. Great public service.
For Game Pass releases there is mod support, but mods that require scripting support, like those that use SKSE in Skyrim, won't work because of the encryption on the game files. Anything that doesn't need scripting, like (most) additional items or UI changes, will install fine.
if I ever actually want to give the game a good go, I'll probably have to raise the black sail so I can get full modding support, but my backlog is bursting at the seams (I own about 1300 PC games, so it's not like I have nothing to play, no matter what my brain tells me), so I don't really see that happening soon. -
NerillDP Thanks for the clarification about the scripting limits for GP games. With over 13 hundred PC games in your library, I suspect you've had a few experiences. Respect!Reply -
Adapheon This has been a scarily positive interaction. I wasn't aware those still happened on the internet.Reply -
HDROME19 To each their own but in my opinion you're descriptions and takes of the game are way off. Bethesda has been making the same type of game for decades now. Starfield is not perfect but most certainly better than just good. If you liked Fallout 4 you'll love Starfield, they've streamlined and refined the games mechanics and the experience more cohesive than it's predecessors by far for sure. Take into account that we live in the patch/update age(Cyberpunk, No Man's Sky) Starfield has the potential to be the GTA of it's genre. Imagine Starfield having online mission co-op? How about if Starfield borrowed from Destiny 2's seamless join mission option? It's not a online game now but it could be. Getting back to the game's current state the addition of a land rover like Mass Effect's would be a welcomed along with other tweaks , with patches and updates the stars are the limit. 😁 To point towards the games falling off of players as if the game is a let down is very misleading. Most gamers have back logs of games they're trying to start and or finish myself included (Calisito, Jedi Survivor, Phantom Liberty) have you considered that fact and take it into account when forming your opinion? Starfield is a great game that you don't like but to write an article about the game that could dissuade others from even trying Starfield is a shame.Reply -
SomeoneYouKnow Lets see... reviewer barely put in enough time to finish a single quest? Check. One of the things they complain about is not the game itself, but how hard it is to exploit a bug that isnt even part of the game? Check. Basing opinion on Steam stats when most players are on XBox? Check.Reply
These reviews could be cut/pasted from Skyrim launch. Which as we all know turned out to be one of the longest lasting games of all time. Starfield is very likely to surpass it. It's a fantastic game, if you actually play it a bit. On the other hand if open world RPGs aren't your cup of tea, you won't like it. It's not a shooter. It is Fallout in Space. <EOF> -
bondee Typical review from a generation with the attention span of a gnat. This game is awesome, sounds like you haven't played it enough. This is a Bethesda game through and through. There will be console mods and add-ons in the future. Speaking of console, you just totally disregarded console players. PC Steam players is not an overall indication of popularity.Reply -
buckneri How are people writing reviews at only a dozen hours in????Reply
I don't even game anymore other than occasionally and I've got 90 hours in the game and still haven't bothered to get more than one special power, or complete an outpost and I still have so many quests and things to do.
The ship building is great, except that they don't use standard camera view controls for modeling programs so it's clunky as heck to build a ship, yet there is an entire reddit just showing off insane ship builds.
Just walking by random people in the game adds quests that you can do and some of them are crazy.
I still haven't visited half the planets, plus after you finish the game there's basically a whole nother game experience with multiple different paths based on how you played the first play through.
People also forget that those numbers aren't really a demonstration of the game, but more a demonstration of the players. Some are still deep in other games and only popped in for a bit too check it out for a dozen hours. Some are reviewers and YouTube people that make content and aren't consistently logging into the same game every day. It's almost like half the Internet that games, streams and plays games based on what looks good in their stream. A single player space exploration with expansive worlds isn't super fun to watch as a third person...