Games use all sorts of tricks to ease performance load, and while Starfield has had its fair share of optimisation woes (though Todd Howard sees things differently) it's not an exception to that rule.
11.09.2023 - 12:51 / techradar.com / Todd Howard
Starfield has already smashed Skyrim's concurrent player record on Steam.
Less than two weeks after launching in early access, Bethesda's sci-fi RPG hit an all-time peak of 330,723 concurrent players on September 10, according to SteamDB, surpassing The Elder Scrolls5: Skyrim's record (via VGC).
Skyrim achieved 287,411 concurrent players on Steam 12 years ago and is still played by a massive amount of players weekly. Although Starfield has managed to beat one of Bethesda's most popular games of all time, it has yet to beat Fallout 4, which had the company's highest-ever peak in concurrent players on Steam, at 472,962 during its release in 2015.
Considering that Starfield is also available on Xbox Series X|S as well as Xbox Game Pass, it's possible that the overall concurrent player count on all available platforms right now is much bigger than we're aware.
According to Bethesda on September 7, the game reportedly racked up over six million players. «As of this morning, Starfield has already surpassed six million players, making it the biggest Bethesda game launch of all time,» the announcement read. This followed a successful launch when the game managed to surpass one million concurrent players across Xbox Series X|S, cloud streaming, and PC.
Meanwhile, game director Todd Howard has confirmed that official mod support will be implemented into Starfield next year.
«When the mods are ready, you will be able to do almost anything as we have done in the past, and the mods will be supported next year, but we will do it in a big way because we love it too,» Howard said.
He also commented on future post-launch DLC, but is keeping quiet on the details for now, saying: «When it will be released is a secret.»
Starfield might be one of the best RPGs of the year, but if you're looking for something different, check out our top picks for the best Xbox Series X games of the year.
Games use all sorts of tricks to ease performance load, and while Starfield has had its fair share of optimisation woes (though Todd Howard sees things differently) it's not an exception to that rule.
Bethesda boss Todd Howard says Starfield was designed and built for longevity, even more so than RPGs like Skyrim or any of the modern Fallouts, with the studio already considering how the game will evolve for years and years to come.
Bethesda boss Todd Howard says Starfield was "basically done" by holiday 2022, and to help test the mammoth RPG, virtually everyone on the development team got a build to play on their own Xbox consoles and PCs at home.
Bethesda is known for making big, blockbuster RPGs—but Starfield's space combat was a totally new frontier for the team. I've personally found a decent bit of fun in zipping around and knocking pirates out of the sky, even if it's clearly not the game's main focus. I don't envy the devs saddled with the task of balancing dogfights in space.
Starfield's jogging speed can appear to be a little fast but thankfully if you're finding it to be an issue a few players have already created some mods to help.
Bethesda games have courted modders for decades at this point and the developer’s space epic, Starfield, is no different. But despite already receiving several handy mods just a week after launch, the game won’t be receiving official mod support until next year.
Starfield has now surpassed the Steam concurrency peak of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which registered 287K concurrent users when it launched twelve years ago, entering Steam's all-time Top 30. It is not the highest concurrency peak of a Bethesda Game Studios title on Steam; Fallout 4 reached a peak of 472K users when it launched eight years ago. However, it was a given that a meaningful portion of players would opt to access the game via the Microsoft Store and the Game Pass subscription service, as per Microsoft's policy.
Starfield players have already made some incredibly useful mods, like a fix for the frustrating inventory system or the addition of DLSS support, but they've also added some very silly things like hairy chests, colourful juice boxes, and the lasagne loving cat Garfield.
It’s official — Starfield had Bethesda’s biggest-ever game launch. Having racked up over six million players as of yesterday (Thursday, September 7), the space-exploration RPG has soared past the launches of Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Starfield players are a creative bunch, and when they're not filling spaceships full of potatoes or building New Atlantis in Lego, they're using the robust character creator to recreate a bunch of famous faces.
Is there anybody out there who didn’t think Starfield would be an immense hit the yoctosecond it released? It became Steam’s top game before it even officially launched. Now it’s been declared that Bethesda’s anticipated sci-fi RPG has surpassed one million concurrent players.
Less than a day after the game's official launch, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer proudly announced that Starfield has exceeded one million concurrent users across all platforms (PC, Xbox Series S|X, and cloud).