Starfield lost 95% of its players on Steam in 6 months – How about Baldur’s Gate 3?

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The two big releases on Steam in 2024 were probably the role-playing games Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield. A good six months after the release, we take a look at the player numbers on Steam. Who is better off now?

This was the situation in 2023: Back then it was actually a fight – David against Goliath:

  • The new role-playing game from Bethesda, from the makers of Fallout and Skyrim, was hotly anticipated and should dominate 2023. There was even an extra showcase in June that was widely seen.
  • Baldur’s Gate 3 was already old hat in 2023. Chapter 1 of the role-playing game had been playable in Early Access on Steam since 2020 and at that point only a few people were interested. Larian specifically moved the release from August 31st to August 3rd, probably to avoid the direct duel with Starfield.

    • The winner of the unequal fight was actually already decided, but one bear sex scene later everything changed.

    The makers of Baldur’s Gate 3 show an intimate love scene with a bear and are immediately banned

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    Baldur’s Gate 3 clearly wins the duel with Starfield on Steam

    Who won in 2023? When released on Steam, Baldur’s Gate had 450,982.3 players on average and 87,343 at its peak.

    Starfield had 145,883.2 players on average and 330,597 at its peak in September 2023 – so it had around a third of the players of Baldur’s Gate 3 purely based on Steam numbers.

    How is Starfield doing now? Starfield has lost consistently since its release in 2023, with fewer players on Steam every month than the month before.

    There are currently an average of 8,110.7 players online. Compared to the release month, this is a loss of 95%.

    How is Baldur’s Gate 3 doing now? In Baldurs’s Gate 3, patches and good reputation have an effect. Although Baldur’s Gate 3 rapidly lost players in the first 3 months, there was a significant upswing on Steam again in December 2023 and January 2024.

    Currently an impressive 135,301.7 people are still playing the game on average. That’s a loss of almost exactly 70% compared to the release month, although that was even earlier than Starfield’s.

    What do you have to consider? Steam isn’t the only platform where players can play Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3. The player numbers on Steam are therefore not an absolute comparison, but rather a relative one, limited to the platform.

    That’s what lies behind it: The numbers confirm a general feeling about Starfield, which was probably not ideally prepared for the period after its release. There was a lack of updates that could be sent. Especially over the Christmas holidays, many players would have liked a new incentive to sink into Starfield again.

    But not everything is gold in Baldur’s Gate 3 either. Many people praised Act 1, which was extremely polished in Early Access, but also criticized the fact that Act 2 was rapidly degrading and Act 3 was so buggy that it was almost impossible to play. Some testers recommended that players wait six months to play Baldur’s Gate 3 so that they don’t ruin the great game with the many bugs.

    Larian had some work to do here, which they seemed willing to do.

    More about Starfield: Starfield only has mediocre reviews on Steam – can the new big update improve the mood?

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