More people are playing Skyrim on Steam than Starfield

eurogamer.net:

Starfield released a little over two months ago on PC and Xbox. However, despite a strong start which saw Starfield become the «biggest Bethesda game launch» of all time, things have tailed off a bit now. In fact, there are currently more people playing Bethesda's earlier RPG, Skyrim, over on Steam.

At the time of writing, there are currently 1610 Steam users playing through 2011's Skyrim release, and 13,776 playing 2016's Special Edition release. That makes a total of 15,386 Skyrimmers at the present time.

Both releases combined have a 24-hour player peak of 25,181. If we pop in the VR players as well, that number is higher still.

In contrast, Bethesda's recently-released Starfield currently has 11,563 astronauts flying around its many stars and planets. Meanwhile, its 24-hour peak is 23,920.

Starfield's all-time Steam peak — from the game's release — sits at 330,723 players, higher than either Skyrim release. But, despite this fact, and the fact it previously beat Skyrim's concurrent player record on Steam, you can see how Starfield's lifetime player count has dipped in the graph below.

It is worth noting that numbers over on Xbox consoles and Game Pass may paint a different picture. But even so, it is still remarkable to see the difference between the two games on Steam, especially given how recently Starfield came out (and how not recently Skyrim came out).

Earlier this week, The Game Awards announced its nominees for the year, with Starfield being notably absent from most categories. In fact, it only received one nomination across the board, that of Best RPG. Here, it is up against other big releases, including Baldur's Gate 3 and Final Fantasy 16.

For more on Starfield, Liv Ngan recently spoke with a group