One Year Later, Will Shattered Space Save Starfield?

Exactly one year ago today, Starfield was unveiled on both Xbox and PC platforms, creating quite a stir worldwide initially. However, after some days of public access, it received a somewhat divided response due to not fully meeting the high expectations set by the prolonged anticipation. Despite being in development for a considerable length of time, its debut performance was somewhat uneven in comparison to the grandeur built up around it.

After a full year since its launch, we’re about to debut the first significant expansion for Starfield, titled Shattered Space, towards the end of this month. Given this milestone, it’s essential to assess the current status of the game and gauge whether there are still players engaged with Starfield.

Lost In The Stars

Initially, Starfield appears captivating. It provides a colossal universe teeming with chances for exploration, accompanied by an engrossing, extensive narrative, numerous side missions, factions, and user-friendly, creative ship-building functions. One of the main attractions of Starfield is that its story unfolds in such a way as to technically grant it virtually endless replay value.

However, upon further exploration, you’ll discover an abundance of duplicated material, pointless subtasks, unmemorable groups, and antagonists, along with a gameplay structure that rapidly loses its charm due to monotony and repetition.

After Starfield’s launch, Bethesda Game Studios appeared to delay the release of fresh content for the game. Even small updates were rolled out sporadically over a lengthy period, and it wasn’t until a full year later that the team delivered Shattered Space, an expansion that was advertised before Starfield even hit the shelves.

So, with that in mind, is there still a significant audience eager for Shattered Space, or have most people already shifted their interests elsewhere?

Mixed Numbers

By considering Steam’s user count for Starfield as an illustration, it seems that the game is holding up relatively well. At the moment of this writing, there were 7,311 players engaged in the game, which isn’t poor for a single-player game a year after its launch.

But Baldur’s Gate 3, which was released a month before Starfield, has 68,586.

Elden Ring, which was boosted by the June release of Shadow of the Erdtree, has 57,600.

10 years following its release in 2014, Fallout 4, developed by Bethesda Game Studios, is still being explored by 16,180 players in a post-apocalyptic setting.

It’s important to stress that many players will still be locked in on Xbox Series X|S, but it’s near impossible to get those numbers.

One of the biggest boons in the Bethesda world is the extent of modding opportunities that bleed into the tech titan’s games. On Nexus Mods, Fallout 4 has 61,700 mods, and Skyrim has almost 100,000. Even 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas has 35,000 mods.

A year after Bethesda Game Studios introduced official mod support for Starfield, the game currently offers only 496 user-created modifications. Interestingly, even Fallout 76 – a game not officially endorsed for modding – boasts over 2,000 mod files on Nexus Mods. It’s understandable that creating mods for Starfield can be challenging, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Examining the public reaction towards streaming content, it’s noticeable that when the article was posted, Starfield had only 62 active viewers on Twitch. This is a significant drop from its peak of 522,021 viewers. In contrast, Fallout 4 boasted approximately 2,000 live viewers. Upon analyzing space-themed games similar to Starfield, it appears that they are currently outperforming Bethesda’s title in terms of viewer count.

Elite: Dangerous – 184
No Man’s Sky – 517
Star Citizen – 4,705

Based on Google’s data, the interest in Starfield dropped significantly at the beginning of 2024 and hasn’t increased since then.

Related: Everything Starfield Borrows From Fallout

The DLC Outlook

One Year Later, Will Shattered Space Save Starfield?

There’s a possibility that Shattered Space might contribute to rekindling the excitement for Starfield, although I’m skeptical it will bring about significant changes. Instead of focusing on the upcoming release of Shattered Space, Bethesda Game Studios has been highlighting the introduction of an in-game vehicle in recent previews. Players are thrilled at the prospect of quicker travel across the game’s various planets, but Shattered Space isn’t generating much buzz.

Historically, Bethesda Game Studios’ DLC (downloadable content) games have been exceptional, particularly in Skyrim and Fallout 3, dating back a while. Fallout 4 had some robust expansions, and Fallout 76 has seen significant improvement over nearly six years. However, I don’t sense the same level of anticipation from the community for Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion as there was for their previous DLC releases.

Those other games had expansions released faster than this, so perhaps that’s a problem.

I’m ready to try out Shattered Space, having moved on from Starfield long ago. I don’t expect it to attract many players who have left, but for a few enjoyable hours at least, it seems worthwhile. Since I invested in the Constellation Edition, I want to maximize my investment and fully experience what it offers.

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