It has now been more than five months since Starfield hit the market and rocketed up the charts in historic fashion. It became the biggest launch in the history of Bethesda Game Studios, pulling in ten million players in a matter of days and dominating headlines for weeks on end. Since then, the natural turning of time has led millions of those players away from the game to greener pastures as the single-player, space-faring epic dries up.
On Steam, Starfield’s player count has dropped by more than 97% in just five months, marking a sizeable decrease that isn’t out of the ordinary by any means, but it’s indicative of people simply moving away from a game that no longer has much to offer those who have played it and had their fill.
Where’s Shattered Space?
Those still clinging to Starfield are desperately awaiting news of Shattered Space, the first expansion for Starfield. By now, Bethesda Game Studios titles that came before would have had their first expansions revealed and dated, but there’s no chatter at all on the Shattered Space front for Starfield fans. There’s also no indication of when official mod support – among other things – will be introduced to Starfield.
Recently, Bethesda promised updates to Starfield would arrive once every six weeks or so, but all we’ve seen so far are bug fixes and some tweaks to how the game runs and how it can be customised.
From the all-time peak of 330,597 players on Steam (which is the easiest platform to get numbers for), the 30-day average for Starfield sits at 7,981 at the time of writing. By comparison, Fallout 4 has a 30-day average of 15,086, and Skyrim has an average of 20,710. Starfield is now closer to its main competitor, No Man’s Sky, which has a 30-day average of 4,597 users on Steam.
Between September and October 2023, Starfield lost 67% of its player base on Steam – and since then, a steady decline has been noticed. On streaming and content platforms, Starfield has suffered a monumental collapse. From an all-time high peak viewer count of 552,021 on Twitch, Starfield has dropped to a 7-day average of just 135, marking a decrease of 99.97%.
Even Starfield’s social channels (such as on X) are seeing a slow decline in followers.
It’s expected that the announcement and subsequent release of Shattered Space will bring players flocking back to Starfield, but is Bethesda leaving it too late?
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