Starfield Triumphs: Surpasses Skyrim's Steam Record

Politics, News Sept. 10, 2023, 3:53 a.m.

Starfields Steam success, surpassing Skyrims concurrency peak, joins Steams Top 30. Six million players already engaged, with modding tools expected in 2024, boosting the games longevity and potential on Xbox consoles.

Starfield has achieved a significant milestone by surpassing the peak concurrent user count on Steam of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game that launched twelve years ago with 287,000 concurrent users. This achievement has propelled Starfield into Steam's all-time Top 30 list. It's worth noting that while Starfield's concurrency peak is impressive, it falls short of the record set by another Bethesda Game Studios title, Fallout 4, which boasted a peak of 472,000 concurrent users when it launched eight years ago. However, it was anticipated that a substantial number of players would opt to access Starfield through the Microsoft Store and the Game Pass subscription service, in accordance with Microsoft's distribution strategy.

While exact sales figures for full-price units remain undisclosed due to Microsoft's policy, Bethesda recently announced that Starfield has already become the studio's most successful launch, attracting over six million players across all available platforms.

Bethesda has ambitious plans to keep players engaged with Starfield for an extended period through official DLCs (with "Shattered Space" as the first story expansion), regular free updates, and support for player-created mods. In an interview with Japanese website Famitsu, Game Director Todd Howard revealed that the official Starfield modding tools are slated for release in 2024. He stated, "With mods, you will be able to do almost anything, just like in previous works. Mod support will be available next year, but we love it too, so we'll do it in a big way."

The timeline for releasing modding tools typically follows a pattern, with a gap of approximately three months between the launch of a Bethesda Game Studios title and the release of public modding tools. For instance, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011, and the mod tools became available to the community on February 7, 2012, alongside the High Resolution Texture Pack. Fallout 4 had a slightly longer wait, launching on November 10, 2015, and offering modding tools in PC Open Beta on April 26, 2016.

Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the official Starfield modding tools may be accessible as early as January or February 2024. In the meantime, the absence of Bethesda's toolkit hasn't deterred the passionate modding community from creating a variety of mods that enhance Starfield's visuals, performance, gameplay, and overall quality. Recently, renowned texture modder Halk Hogan announced the upcoming release of the "Starfield HD Reworked Project," which aims to improve texture quality without compromising performance.

The availability of official mod tools is poised to significantly expand Starfield's modding potential, making it accessible to Xbox console users as well. We will continue to showcase the finest mods for Bethesda's sci-fi RPG as they are released, so stay tuned for more exciting developments.