Bethesda has managed to surpass the massive success that was Skyrim when it comes to the total number of concurrent players with Starfield. Skyrim has been released on everything under the sun and has gotten many remasters and ports over the years, so this is no small feat for Starfield.
According to the data provided by SteamDB, Starfield achieved its peak number of players on Steam on Sunday, September 10. So the current 24-hour peak and all-time peak are at 330,723 simultaneous players. On the other hand, the all-time peak for Skyrim is 287,411, which it reached well over a decade ago.
This is just another metric that shows that Starfield hit the ground sprinting, and will only get better from here. But although Bethesda and Xbox should be very proud of these numbers, Starfield isn’t even close to reaching the all-time concurrent player peak of another legendary title from Bethesda, Fallout 4.
Starfield Concurrent Players Top Skyrim, But Not All Bethesda Games
Around 8 years ago when the game came out, Fallout 4 hit its peak numbers on Steam at a whopping 472,962 players, dwarfing the enormous success of Starfield. But these numbers don’t even tell the whole story.
Starfield launched as an Xbox exclusive after Microsoft’s acquisition, and so, is also available for free for anyone who is subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. On the other hand, Fallout 4 was not available on any subscription service at launch (because subscription services weren’t what they are now). Fallout 4 was also available on PlayStation, further limiting its PC numbers.
Phil Spencer did say that Starfield surpassed over 1 million concurrent players in total on all platforms, but he did not specify how many of those were on Xbox or PC. But clearly, that number was achieved because of Game Pass, and the PC players seem to be far lower in comparison.
If history is anything to go by, as time goes on, PC will become the place to play Starfield in the future. Not just because of the higher performance ceiling, but also because of the unmatched modding community.
