Despite the faults that have been criticized for it; Well Named ; Starfield is still close to the top of the 2023 Steam sales rankings.
Starfield, supposed to receive its biggest update today, was not necessarily the game dreamed of by all fans of space and role-playing games. Even if the game exceeded 10 million players in September, it will never benefit from the aura of a certain Skyrim, the fault of too many defects that are difficult to correct, even by mods. However, this did not prevent it from quietly slipping into third place on the Steam sales podium. A ranking calculated according to the revenue generated by the games concerned, which the Video Game Insight (VGI) firm established in a study.
Unforgivable flaws for a next-gen game
Starfield was announced with great fanfare as the game of the decade. Presented by Bethesda as the ultimate space opera, we players were supposed to find there what we couldn’t find anywhere else. An epic story, exciting quests leading us to explore a galaxy filled with thousands of planets, a beautiful and coherent universe. Certainly, the game offers an experience, which, at times, is clearly worth experiencing. You only need to visit the game’s subreddit to see that some players are easily exceeding 500 hours of play.
Objectively, Starfield is far from having managed to tick all the boxes. Bethesda has rested on its achievements, and the game is very dated in many aspects. The gameplay is aging, the main story quests don’t really make you want to abandon your social life to focus on it and on the technical side, we came close to disaster. Space exploration is all about clicking on a map, and its world is pretty empty overall. Or if it’s filled, it’s filled with generic, stiff NPCs, unexciting quests, and boring planets. However, we cannot take away the quality of its OST, signed Inon Zur, rather masterful.
A commercial success despite everything
If we sometimes read that the game drew its success from Microsoft’s Gamepass, the reality is quite different. According to the study conducted by VGI, Starfield is therefore in third place in sales on Steam, with 235 million dollars generated. He wins the pawn Resident Evil 4 Remake ($159 million) and FC 2024 ($81 million). This year, Steam generated $9.08 billion in revenue with 580 million games sold through the platform. At the top of the ranking, the excellent Baldur’s Gate III literally crushed the competition ($657 million), followed by Hogwarts Legacy ($341 million).
Despite its major shortcomings and undeniable design flaws, Starfield has still found a place in the sun in this Steam sales top. A paradox which still raises the thorny question of the quality of AAA games in relation to players’ expectations.
Sources: JV.com, Video Game Insight
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