Starfield has hit another milestone, as it reaches a new all-time high of concurrent players on Steam.
As reported by Tech4Gamers, it has already reached 234,502 concurrent players. Of course, we should remember that it reached this landmark before the game officially launched, and only on Steam.
To put that in context, that has already put it past the concurrent player highs reached by Resident Evil 4 Remake, Armored Core 6, and Remnant 2. Other high profile 2023 releases, such as Hogwarts Legacy and Baldur’s Gate 3, can still tout higher player numbers.
It’s interesting to see how much momentum Starfield has been generating in light of the odd situation around its metascore. If you look at its 80+ metascore, you might think it wasn’t nearly unanimously acclaimed.
In fact, most reviewers gave it 90s or perfect 100 scores. Some reviewers gave the game scores in the 70s, and that’s enough to take it down from its potential 90s metascore. But this speaks to the flaws in the metascore system in general.
Metascores are an easy shortcut, to confirm when a game is the high 90s game that players expect it to be, such as a new The Legend of Zelda open world game or a new Forza racing game. But that only works when the sentiment is unanimous across the board.
Starfield wasn’t that divisive, not compared to the likes of Pokemon Sword and Shield. But it only takes a few reviews that fall far lower than the average score, or even the majority of scores, to drop the metascore thanks to the weighted average.
Now, we don’t know all the details of how MetaCritic gets to their metascores. They have admitted that the bigger and more famous websites get more relevance than others. But in this case, all that has done is make it appear that Starfield isn’t as popular as it actually is.
But, I have a feeling that won’t be Starfield’s story for much longer. When Starfield hits Game Pass, you can bet that many of those 25 million subscribers around the world will also be logging in to play. Microsoft may be keeping that Xbox concurrent player data to themselves, or they may share it with the public, but we’ll definitely be feeling it. Bethesda delivered on a game that people will play for years and we will feel that in kind, as conversation around the game keeps going for months and months and months.
Starfield will be releasing on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
