New Starfield patch fixes 500 bugs, but is it too late?
Starfield’s latest patch, containing more than 500 bug fixes and tweaks, leaves Steam beta, but the game’s player count continues to dwindle.
With more than 500 fixes included in the latest Starfield update to leave Steam beta, you’d think players would be making a return to the game and discovering a huge number of improvements. Unfortunately, SteamDb numbers imply the opposite: Starfield player counts are still declining despite the game’s continued support.
The most recent update – patch 1.10.31 – actually introduced a couple of new features, namely adding facial expressions to the Starfield photo mode, removing the digipick penalty from undoing a move during the lockpicking mini-game, and added the ability to open doors and collect resources while in the Starfield scanner mode.
Those changes might not sound like much, because they aren’t. The big changes that players have been calling for have yet to be addressed. In-game maps continue to elude players, forcing players to rely on interactive Starfield maps like those on our site, or installing a dedicated Starfield mod. Transportation improvements, which were promised before Christmas, have yet to materialize.
This latest update did indeed do a lot of good for Starfield missions by fixing a number of quest elements, but this has done little to persuade people to return to Starfield, according to the latest figures on SteamDb. In fact, SteamDb numbers show that Starfield has reached its lowest player count yet, dropping to 6629 active players on March 5, 2024. The trend doesn’t appear to be improving, even with Bethesda releasing its largest Starfield discount as part of its spring sale.
If not even a discount can improve its player count in any significant way, or a patch containing more than 500 fixes, will Starfield ever recover?
Our hope is that the upcoming Starfield DLC does much more than simply expand the story, and adds in a ton of new elements and features. If the first DLC package falls short, the job of saving Starfield’s player count may well fall to the modding community who are eagerly anticipating the revamped Creation Kit tools due to arrive at some point this year.
What do you think? Is it too late for Starfield? Or will the first expansion go one step beyond what anyone expected, and revitalize the game? Tell us what you think over in the Starfield forum.
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