Starfield Currently Records Less Player Count Than 12-Year-Old Skyrim, but Why?

Published 11/14/2023, 9:19 AM EST

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After the recent Game Awards 2023 GOTY nominee’s announcement, fans could not help but wonder about the reason for Starfield’s exclusion. The game is the latest from Bethesda, and had a huge hype at the time of its release after all. However, one of the reason might be hidden behind this sci-fi open-world game’s community. When it launched, it was one of the most-played titles on Steam. But now, it’s an entirely different scenario.

It looks like Starfield is nowhere close to its initial numbers when it comes to player count. In fact, it is way behind compared to one of Bethesda’s previous titles. That too, within two months of its launch!

There is a reason Starfield is lagging behind Skyrim in player count just two months after its launch

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Starfield started development at Bethesda in 2016, after Fallout 4 was released. Its initial plans started way back in 2013, when the name was trademarked. They kept on building on it and gradually reached where they are today. As a full-fledged space exploration title, Starfield might have unlimited possibilities, but it’s nowhere near what its predecessors offer.

After two months Starfield has officially less players on Steam than Skyrim a game release by the same company 12 years ago. How are you feeling about this games future? Will it get the patches and mod support it so desperately needs? Or will it be forgotten?
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Skyrim, when launched, offered an unrestricted world with the freedom for players to do what they wanted. They could be thieves, they could be vampires, and they could even be vampire hunters. Nothing was off the table. A sense of wonder accompanied that freedom. Imagine heading out of your home in that game and just walking a straight line; you would have no idea what you would find in the next 15 minutes. It felt thrilling. In giving players auto-generated planet surfaces, Bethesda stole that feeling from the players. There’s also the lack of drama. While some might call it trivial, Starfield missed the dramatic opening of Skyrim and Fallout 4.

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When players do not feel they are heading on a massive cinematic journey, they sometimes get underwhelmed. Thus, it looks like everything in Starfield worked differently from Skyrim, and that’s where the game hurt itself. The fans now hope that Bethesda takes a leaf out of this book and comes up with better games in the future.

Here’s hoping Bethesda learned its lesson for Elder Scrolls 6

Now the best fans can hope for is that Bethesda has learned something from this. They can make sure Elder Scroll 6 is nothing like Starfield and is a successor to the likes of Skyrim and Fallout 4 in every way.

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And it would not hurt them if they actually worked on their engine a bit more, or maybe moved on to something more current. What are your views on Starfield missing out on the TGA 2023 nominations? Let us know in the comments below.

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Written by:

Rohit Sejwal

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Rohit Sejwal is a senior eSports writer at EssentiallySports. Rohit has an MSc. in Journalism and was a part of OMLogic and other organizations working in a diverse range of content creation fields, including editing, content writing, and scriptwriting.
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Edited by:

Debmallya Chakraborty