Starfield Surpasses Skyrim's Concurrent Player Record On Steam

Dragons apparently can't compete with the final frontier, as Starfield has eclipsed Skyrim's concurrent player record on Steam. The space-RPG saw almost 40,000 more people Sunday than The Elder Scrolls V had at its peak over 12 years ago.

VGC reported that Starfield hit 330,723 players September 10, per SteamDB. That easily tops Skyrim's peak of 287,411 people back when the game launched in 2011. However, this isn't a Bethesda Game Studios record on Steam, as Fallout 4 saw over 470,000 players eight years ago.

Keep in mind for Starfield that Steam players paid for the full game, since those numbers don't include Game Pass subscribers. In fact, a lot of people spent a premium to check out Starfield early on Steam. The spacefaring RPG saw over 230,000 on the service within 24 hours of launching in the five-day early access period.

On the September 6 launch day, Starfield surpassed 1 million concurrent users across PC and Xbox Series X|S--as well as cloud gaming. On September 7, Bethesda announced that Starfield already had 6 million players, making it the biggest launch ever for the studio.

It's a bit tough to compare Starfield's launch to Skyrim, Fallout 4, and even Fallout 76 because of the spacefaring RPG's availability on Game Pass. That means that subscribers don't have to fork over a full $70 to play the title, even though they're still paying at least a monthly fee of $15. In addition, Starfield isn't available on PlayStation 5 as it's an Xbox console exclusive. Previous games from Bethesda Game Studios were multiplatform.

For more, check out Starfield tips that you may wish to know sooner than later for the game. And don't forget to read GameSpot's Starfield review.