What you need to know
- Shattered Space is a DLC for Bethesda’s space exploration RPG Starfield. Having first been announced when Starfield released, Shattered Space finally launched on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC earlier this week.
- However, all signs indicate Shattered Space hasn’t generated significant player interest, with Starfield’s concurrent player count only rising slightly in the wake of its release.
- Specifically, since the expansion launched, Starfield has been averaging 14-16,000 concurrent players on Steam — far fewer than other recent AAA games and their DLCs like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. It’s likely doing better on Xbox and the Microsoft Store (it’s on Game Pass, but Shattered Space isn’t), though it still isn’t in the top 25 most-played Xbox games.
- This just barely pushes the game past 2015’s Fallout 4 — Bethesda’s previous single player RPG. At the moment, it has about 13-15,000 Steam players at any given time.
The Shattered Space DLC is the biggest addition Bethesda’s made to its 2023 space exploration RPG Starfield yet, having released earlier this week on September 30 on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. However, despite Bethesda’s efforts to hype up the expansion and market it as a deep, enticing roleplaying experience, the game’s player count suggests it’s struggling to drive fans to actually check it out.
At the time of writing, SteamDB data indicates only 14-16,000 Steam users are playing Starfield at any given time, with the concurrent player count after Shattered Space’s launch peaking at 21,792 on Monday night. This puts the game just slightly ahead of 2015’s Fallout 4 — a game that’s nine years old — which is averaging 13-15,000 players right now and had a recent spike up to 20,326 on Sunday evening. And yes, Fallout 4 benefited hugely from this year’s wildly successful Fallout TV show, but even so, Starfield should be doing far better than it is.
It does seem to be faring a bit better on Xbox and the Microsoft Store — notably, Starfield is on Xbox Game Pass, even though Shattered Space itself is not — though it’s still not in the top 25 most-played Xbox games. According to Microsoft’s official list, it falls just short in 26th place, with Fallout 4 at the 35th position.
While I never expected the arrival of this story expansion to rival the numbers of Starfield’s full launch last year, I certainly expected more for a game that peaked at 330,723 players on Steam at release. And compared to other recent AAA titles like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 that skyrocketed up to 781,261 and 274,526 concurrent players when their respective DLCs came out, it’s clear that Shattered Space has failed to generate strong player interest.
The expansion’s underwhelming performance comes as its reviews plummet to “Mostly Negative” on Steam, with only 35% of them giving it a Positive rating. By and large, most players cite a short runtime and an overall lack of content as the DLC’s biggest issues, expressing disappointment in what it brought to the game. Going into Shattered Space’s release, expectations were fairly high, as Bethesda advertised it as a meatier, more bespoke release compared to normal Starfield and its huge number of large, but arguably shallow worlds that were scarcely home to handcrafted locations.
I’m sure the DLC’s poor reception hasn’t done its attachment rate any favors, especially since it has an MSRP of $29.99 — nearly half of Starfield’s full price (it’s discounted to $26.79 on CDKeys, notably). Indeed, $30 for an expansion that’s got just 5-15 hours of content is a tough ask when the similarly priced Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty deliver double or triple that, along with significant changes, additions, and improvements to their base games.
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At the end of the day, I’d argue Bethesda has made the right call opting to build deeper, more handcrafted Starfield experiences, but it needs to do more — deliver releases akin to Fallout 4’s excellent Far Harbor DLC, instead of underwhelming ones that leave players wanting. We know there’s at least one other expansion coming, so hopefully that one is far more substantial.
Beyond that, one has to wonder how long Xbox and Bethesda will continue investing in future Starfield releases with The Elder Scrolls 6 and the far-off Fallout 5 on the horizon, especially if they perform like Shattered Space has. I expect we might get more DLC-style updates if Starfield’s next expansion is far more successful, but if it’s not? It may be time for the developers to move on.
