2023 Ends With Starfield As The Most-Played RPG, Not Baldur’s Gate 3

Numbers don’t lie, especially when they’re official. As pointed out by Game Infinitus, Baldur’s Gate 3 has been overtaken by Starfield, Xbox’s space-faring RPG exclusive that launched to mediocre reviews, in terms of sheer playtime stats. This is according to developer-posted statistics by both Bethesda and Larian Studios, where Baldur’s Gate 3 players clocked over 4.52 billion hours but Starfield fans spent more than 5.3 billion hours exploring the cosmos. 

This converts to a whopping 61,000 years playing Starfield, with Baldur’s Gate 3 players lagging a little behind at 51,000 years in total. In case you missed it, Larian Studios posted these stats in December, and Bethesda joined in on the fun later on as well, releasing a blog post to declare various statistics revolving around the universe-spanning RPG. 

Now, of course, there are various factors at play here that influence these otherwise gigantic playtimes. For starters, Starfield is a day-one Game Pass release—Xbox’s front-running video game subscription service that millions of players have access to, evidently, so many didn’t have to purchase the title to play it. Then, there’s Baldur’s Gate 3, which is available on more platforms than Starfield, and also has been out, at least on PC, for more days than Starfield. 

That balances out the time difference between the posting of the stats of both games. For reference, the Starfield post went live on December 5, while Baldur’s Gate 3’s tracking is from December 5.   

With that being said, one cannot so easily ignore what the current state of affairs looks like for both titles. Starfield, for starters, has a Mostly Negative review rating on Steam at the moment, with not a single award grabbed at The Game Awards this year, not to mention its sub-9,000 player count on PC right now. Baldur’s Gate 3 bagged the Game of the Year award last year and has over 170,000 users enjoying it at present.

As for what the future holds, Bethesda plans on bringing a ton of new features in 2024 to Starfield along with its very first expansion titled Shattered Space. Baldur’s Gate 3 devs, on the other hand, are looking forward to the RPG’s physical release, along with a fancy Deluxe Edition that sports a number of mouth-watering goodies for fans and D&D fanatics. 

Starfield came out on September 6, 2023, globally for the Xbox Series X|S and PC, grabbing a 3.5/5 rating in eXputer’s review. Baldur’s Gate 3, however, was first released in August, 2023, and was also ported to PlayStation 5, macOS, and Xbox Series X|S later in the year. We gave the game a perfect 5/5 in our review, with review expert Huzaifah calling it “one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and a testament to the talent of developer Larian Studios.”