Starfield had quite an impressive launch, even when comparing it to Bethesda’s usual RPG releases. According to the behemoth developer, the interstellar entry saw more initial sales than any of its older games, including the likes of Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Since the successful period, though, player numbers have dwindled and reviews have dropped with fans waiting for big updates containing new features. The first of 2024’s major expected patches is now facing a delay it seems.
Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing the highly anticipated update which the developer claims contains over “100 fixes and improvements” just yet. The RPG has faced a setback amid the dropping Starfield player count due to an unexpected problem. According to one of the studio’s community managers, Bethesda has “discovered an issue they want to address” before releasing the huge Starfield update.
The update itself was supposed to drop on Wednesday, January 17, but no longer has an official release date. Instead, Bethesda gives us a more general window and says on Discord it’s hoping to have the mysterious issue resolved soon, in time for a Steam Beta launch a some point “later this week.” We’re not sure whether or not this delay will set back the public non-Steam beta release of the update, but it’ll likely deploy on time.
If all goes to plan, that deployment should follow “two weeks” after the original Steam Beta release. The update is nothing to scoff at, with a lot of performance-related fixes and quality-of-life improvements ahead of the Starfield traveling update as well as other even bigger future patches this year. It addresses immersion-breaking problems with your Starfield outposts and some progression-halting bugs, too.
While you wait to learn when the new update will actually drop, you can browse through a few of our favorite Starfield mods to try and improve your base game a bit on your own ahead of Bethesda’s official tweaks. If you want a better understanding of in-game functions and how to best build your galactic Constellation explorer, you can also look to our in-depth guide on all of the best Starfield traits and which ones to pick.
Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.