After generating a lot of expectations, the number of active players on Bethesda’s role-playing game Starfield continues to decline at high speed. Several factors are to blame.
During the months leading up to the release of Starfield, Bethesda’s role-playing game, every little element revealed about the game left us more and more impatient to get our hands on it. Then the title finally comes out at the beginning of September. After the excitement of the discovery, the “hype” quickly subsides and a month later, the number of active players drops by 66% according to the figures of SteamDB. Of course, that doesn’t take console players into account, but still.
In itself, the fact that there are fewer, or even much fewer, players on a game after its release is not at all surprising. It’s a phenomenon that affects even the most popular video games. Starfield is, however, a special case. If we compare it to other titles of the genre, it is far behind. As we write these lines, there are 12,501 people playing Starfield. At the same time, there are 69,558 on Baldur’s Gate 3, 19,702 on Skyrim: Anniversary Edition And 12,909 on Fallout 4. Bethesda’s latest is therefore far behind much older games. But why ?
There are more players on Skyrim or Fallout 4 than on Starfield, why?
To explain this observation, we must remember that Starfield is full of bugs and Bethesda is not (yet) ready to admit it. The different patches have corrected the biggest ones of course, but in absolute terms, the studio claims that some problems spotted are on purpose. A strange way of justifying oneself to the players which continues when the latter address another important point: Starfield is boring. After the surprise of the first planets, we quickly realize that the vast majority of them are empty. Developer response: “Some of Starfield’s planets were designed to be empty, but it’s not boring.” Except yes, it is for a lot of people.
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Probably too ambitious, Starfied just doesn’t cut it. Those who dreamed of a huge space exploration game are pouting at the characterless characters where the side quests with absurd endings. This does not mean that we should forget Starfield, on the contrary. The game is set to last for years thanks to the official arrival of the mods in 2024. A little patience, the community will surely take care of giving the game back the shine it wanted to have.