Less than six months after release, Starfield isn’t too hot in terms of its Steam player numbers. In fact, Skyrim: Special Edition is outperforming the 2023 game in that regard and doing so several times over.
Skyrim: Special Edition players outnumber Starfield players by 3 to 1 on Steam
Starfield launched on September 6, 2023, and was a big hit at the time. It earned mostly positive reviews and was a significant draw for Xbox Game Pass. However, it didn’t take long for the game to lose its luster. According to SteamDB, it’s fallen from an all-time peak of 330,723 Steam players to a 24-hour peak of only 7,144 players. That’s a drop of almost 98% in less than half a year. By comparison, Skyrim: Special Edition has a 24-hour peak of 22,705, more than three times as much.
Additionally, Starfield’s monthly peak was 13,566 on Sunday, February 4. Skyrim’s peak on February 4 was 33,801, while its monthly peak was 34,749 on Sunday, February 11.
In fairness, Skyrim: Special Edition went through a similar trajectory six months after its release. From an all-time peak of 69,776 in October 2016, it dropped to a peak of only 16,569 in May 2017. However, that’s still only a decline of about 76% in the same amount of time.
Skyrim also has a larger and more active modding scene, as one would expect from it being a much older game. This is a big part of why it remained popular for so long. However, there is still no getting around the fact that Starfield is still losing to a seven-year-old remaster of a 12-year-old game.
