By The lack of a Game of the Year nomination at the Game Awards this year has somewhat rankled the fanbase of Xbox and Bethesda’s big 2023 exclusive “Starfield”.
From the looks of it, however, that fanbase may be shrinking – at least via the most popular PC platform. According to Rock Paper Shotgun, the concurrent player count on Steam for the 12-year-old “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” is outpacing that of sci-fi exploration epic “Starfield” just two months after the latter was released. On Monday, Skyrim’s 12,705 player count edged out Starfield’s 12,334 player count.
“Starfield” launched to big numbers in September – Xbox’s Phil Spencer indicated the title had over a million players on Game Pass just a few days after its release, while Bethesda itself reportedly claimed that six million people had played it a day after its full release.
At the time of launch, the title also racked up 300,000 concurrent players on Steam. Thus at any one time, the Steam player count is only a fraction of the audience – with many playing elsewhere either via Xbox or Game Pass.
That said, it’s also a decent representation of audience interest in the title and it seems that interest faded quickly as the title lost 66% of its players in one month and 39% in the last 30 days. ‘Skyrim’ on the other hand, which lost 18% of its players in September, has clawed back more than half of that loss recently.
Not helping “Starfield” is the lack of official mod support for “Starfield,” mods being a key element that has kept the PC community flocking to Skyrim over the years. “Starfield” is still going strong on Game Pass and is being updated with official mod support soon. In addition, at least one expansion is on the way next year.
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