Starfield Unpacking on Steam: What is it and how long does it take?

Many Starfield players in early access pre-loaded the game the night before, only to return and stare at a loading bar on Steam as it crawled across their screen at the pace of a dead snail with an “Unpacking” message.

What did you do to deserve this? Nothing. Does Todd Howard owe you an apology? Probably. What you’re experiencing is called unpacking, but a more appropriate term for it would be “decrypting.”

So what exactly is unpacking, and how long will it be before you get into the game?

How long does Unpacking take to finish for Starfield?

You see, even though you downloaded all 86.5 gigabytes of Starfield, those files are encrypted and must be unpacked before you can play the game.

This process can take literal hours, especially if the game is stored on a hard drive (HDD) as opposed to a solid-state drive (SSD). If the game is installed onto an SSD this will cut down your wait time considerably. We’ve also noticed the game just runs better on an SSD compared to an HDD, so if you have room for it on your SSD then definitely make it your home for Starfield.

If all you have is an HDD there is a way to speed up the process. If you clean up that drive so there’s more space available, that will lower the amount of time it’ll take to install. Still, it will take around two to three hours for it to finish and longer if you have a crowded HDD.

As for console users, Xbox pre-load began on Aug. 17 but there’s no unpacking process for the game’s console release; unpacking is an issue only for PC users on Steam.

What’s Unpacking for, exactly?

This practice is to prevent people from rooting through the game files before the game’s release, also known as data mining.

This is kind of a moot point in this case since spoilers already leaked online in August 2023. The leaker, DHavenShadow, whose real name is Darin Harris, a 29-year-old man from Tennessee, posted a 45-minute-long cellphone video of him playing the game.

He was later arrested and charged with felony theft for stealing 67 copies of Starfield from a warehouse. It remains to be seen if Microsoft or Bethesda will take legal action against Harris for the leak.

“Todd, no offense man, that’s a good game,” says Harris, apparently addressing Starfield’s game director Todd Howard shortly before his arrest.

Data miners target numerous game titles in the hopes of gleaning information about an update or release before its actual launch. Apex Legends and Pokémon Go are just two titles of many that encounter data miners on the regular, with some developers and publishers swift in punishing such action.

Some developers, however, are embracing data mining. Remnant 2 developers Gunfire Games hid an entire archetype in the files for treasure hunters to find and reveal to the player base, indicating that maybe a few in the gaming sphere believe data mining is a natural part of a game’s release.

In the meantime, Starfield doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, and as such you’ll need to unpack everything before launching to the stars.