Starfield is the first new IP created by Bethesda in nearly 30 years. The game has finally launched globally on PC and Xbox, receiving generally favorable reviews from players and showing some great numbers.
How did players react to Starfield?
At the moment of writing, Starfield has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 86% of the 13,558 reviews being positive. The number of reviews is growing rapidly, so the final score may still change.
Many pointed to the game’s slow start, but also praised it for having classic “Bethesda vibes”, with some players also using the old cliche of calling it “Skyrim/Fallout 4 in space.” However, even among positive reviews, there is criticism aimed at the lack of localization in many languages, including Turksih, Russian, Korean, and Ukrainian.
Players who left negative reviews criticize Starfield for having many loading screens between gameplay sequences, which ruin the space exploration experience. Other users also complained about performance issues.
On Xbox, the game currently has a rating of 3.7/5 stars based on 2,200 reviews from US players.
Starfield’s peak CCU compared to other Bethesda games and this year’s biggest launches
Shortly after its full launch, Starfield peaked at 250,823 concurrent players on Steam (via SteamDB). This is only a couple thousand up from its previous peak reached on September 4 (during its brief early access period).
Starfield’s current peak of 250k concurrent users (CCU) wasn’t enough to overtake Skyrim, which peaked at over 287k CCU at launch. Fallout 4 remains the biggest launch by this metric of any game developed or published by Bethesda.
Top 15 Bethesda games on Steam by peak concurrent players (via SteamDB)
Starfield may attract more players over the weekend, but given its launch momentum, it is unlikely to break into the top 3 Steam releases of 2023 by peak CCU. Hogwarts Legacy still holds the throne with 879k peak CCU, followed by Baldur’s Gate 3 (875k) and Sons of the Forest (414k).
Bethesda’s latest title is currently ranked 4th, above Resident Evil 4 (168k), Armored Core VI (156k), and Remnant II (110k).
Overall, Starfield’s launch was successful, as the game also topped Steam’s weekly top sellers chart for the week of August 29-September 5. It is also available on Game Pass, so it will be interesting to see if Microsoft shares any data on Starfield’s impact on the service.