Merely Five Months Into Launch, Starfield’s Players Plummet By 97%

Although it was reported back in December that Starfield has crossed a total of 12 million players, the numbers spell gloom and doom today for what is otherwise Bethesda’s biggest launch ever. Starfield’s current concurrent player count on Steam is about 8,500 players at the time of writing, which is one whopper of a difference compared to the space RPG’s 330,723 concurrent player peak 5 months ago. 

Do the math and you’ll find out that this means almost 97% of the game’s players going astray, (thanks PCGamesN) and not finding their way back to Starfield. The heightened player count occurred at the time of the title’s release, which traces back to the early days of September. Due to launch hype and a number of other reasons factoring into play, Starfield did well on PC, but only in vain apparently. 

Now, I understand that a single-player action-adventure like Starfield can’t be hitting hundreds of thousands of players on a regular basis, but this particular fall from grace within 6 months of release is fairly head-turning. Take Cyberpunk 2077 for instance—that game came out a fair while before Starfield and is still doing rounds across the board with an average 30-thousand player count on Steam.

And let’s just not even bring Baldur’s Gate 3 into the equation here—2023’s Game of the Year winner at The Game Awards, and a monumentally successful RPG for Larian Studios. These comparisons may come across as wayward, but they do go on to show how Starfield had the perfect chance to live up to its potential and the hype it gathered prior to its release, but a bad level design, a swath of bugs, and other technical issues held it back from sheer glory. 

Related Content to Read Up On: 

• Starfield Gets Review-Bombed After Winning Most Innovative Gameplay Award
• Recent Starfield Reviews On Steam Are Now “Mostly Negative”
• Starfield Design Director Responds To Criticism; Says Players Are Disconnected From Reality

Starfield came out on September 6, 2023, for the Xbox Series X|S and PC. eXputer rated the game 3/5 in its review, with author Asad Ahmed remarking, “Starfield aims high and delivers an expansive galaxy ripe for exploration, but it stumbles in its execution.”