Bethesda’s first expansion, Shattered Space, for its sci-fi RPG sandbox game Starfield received “mostly negative” reviews on Steam as the game’s peak player count has declined by 95% in a little over a year since the game released.
A screenshot from Starfield (2023), Bethesda Game Studios
Shattered Space released on September 30th and costs $29.99 on top of the $69.99 for the base Starfield game. And it is not being well received with even so-called positive reviews being negative.
User Noosphere gave the game a positive review, but wrote, “The story is boring af. Would recommend if you have insomnia and need to work the next day.”
Noosphere on Steam
Similarly, Ki11s0n3 also gave the game a positive review, but wrote, “It’s more Starfield. Neither good nor bad. Just Meh. Not bad enough to not recommend it, but also not good enough to at full price. Wait for a sale.”
He added, “Make of that what you will. If you enjoyed the base game you’ll enjoy the DLC. If you didn’t like the base game this DLC isn’t going to change your mind. This is not some big upgrade to the game like it seemed it was going to be.”
Ki11s0n3 on Steam
Mel Gibson after 3 beers wrote, “Starfield, and now shattered space, feels like a game made by a bunch of retired-in-place managers doing the bare minimum to meet requirements directing a bunch of outsourced labor to create the most mediocre product possible. It’s an incredibly lazy game all around.”
“The main thing this game and its DLC has done is collectively and severely lowered everyone’s expectations for ES6,” he added.
Mel Gibson after 3 beers on Steam
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“No new features, no fixes to the fact that this game is STILL a boring mess, not even an attempt to fix the game’s core issues and they release this for $40 instead. What a joke,” wrote Galahad.
Galahad on Steam
“The writing for this game is just awful,” posted STDsInAJuiceBox. “The DLC is supposed to take place on the religious zealots home land you’d think the story would be more dark, but every tome something evil is about to go down the NPCs be like ‘Gee-golly outsider you don’t wanna do that. it would be a no no.’ get the hell out of here with this corny ass writing, its a rated M game.”
“Lets hope Bethesda hire better writers for the next Elder Scrolls game,” he added.
STDsInAJuiceBox on Steam
JonesyNZL posted, “Congrats Todd, you handcrafted a planet this time. This DLC is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring, go figure. The NPC dialogue almost put me to sleep and some of the quests are buggy. Driving the REV-8 around is extremely tedious as it gets caught on every stick you try to drive through.”
“When Skyrim’s first DLC came out, it gave us Vampire Lord form and Vampire/Werewolf Skill Trees. When Fallout 4’s first DLC came out, it gave us ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ build your own robot companion. Starfield’s first DLC gives us … ♥♥♥♥ all. For 54.99 kiwi dollars, oh man what a deal for some quality Emil Pagliarulo chicken scratch.”
He added, “I’m going to go play Skyrim now, I’m playing as a Nord Paladin/Dragonborn/Shadow-Thief hybrid kinda thing at the moment. She’s really cool, her names Bani Windcaller and she’s a master in all things weapons and restoration magic and she rides ♥♥♥♥♥♥’ drago- sorry I got off topic. Midded Space.”
JonesyNZL on Steam
It appears as if a number of people are doing what JonesyNZL is doing and abandoning Starfield for Skyrim. Starfield has seen its peak concurrent player counts drop over 95% since the game first released back in September 2023.
SteamDB reports the game hit a peak concurrent all time of 330,723 players on September 4th, the day after the game released. The last 24-hour peak only hit 15,862. That’s a decline of 95.2%.
Starfield SteamDB peak concurrent player charts
In fact, Shattered Space appears to have hardly had an impact on the peak concurrent player counts since it was released. The game hit a peak concurrent of 21,792 on September 30th, but that was only up 37% from August when it hit a peak of 15,908 for the month.
However, the game was last over 20,000 peak concurrent players back in December 2023. It had fallen to 8,713 in April.
Starfield Peak Concurrent Player Counts by month via SteamDB
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As far as Skyrim, the game did beat out Starfield in the last 24 hours. It had a 24-hour peak of 21,868 players.
Skyrim SteamDB peak concurrent player charts
Not only did it have a higher 24-hour peak, but the game has had higher average players as well as higher peaks over Starfield since December 2023.
And not by small margins either. For example, Skyrim had 123.8% more peak concurrent players than Starfield in August 2024. In July 2024, Skyrim had 145% more peak concurrent players.
Even in September 2024 Skyrim had 142.9% more average players than Starfield.
Skyrim Peak Concurrent Player Counts by month via SteamDB
What do you make of these negative reviews and the massive decline in players for Starfield?
