All new content in Starfield’s June 9 update

The June 9 Xbox Games Showcase gave us our first detailed look at the upcoming Shattered Space DLC, but we’re more excited about a surprise update dropping the same day as the showcase.

This update announcement was a surprise and the new content includes something many players (myself included) have been looking forward to even more than the DLC. In fact, this update may have just changed everything for the future of Starfield. Read on to learn what’s being added to the game in the surprise June 9 update and why we’re so damn excited about it.

Everything new in the June 9 Starfield update

Official patch notes haven’t been released for this update yet, as the new content doesn’t go live until late June 9 (precise time TBC). When the patch notes are available, we’ll add them to this article.

For now, what we know comes from the Shattered Space DLC trailer, which saw the June 9 update news cheekily tacked on to the end of the video. In terms of gameplay, the update includes:

• New locations
• New gear
• New bounties

It’s not yet clear exactly how in-depth these additions will be, but the trailer makes it sound an awful lot like you’re finally going to be able to join The Tracker’s Alliance and be a bona fide bounty hunter. Previously, bounties in Starfield functioned only as radiant quests with no depth or guild progression. The community has been saying for months that it feels like not fleshing out The Tracker’s Alliance as a full faction was a missed opportunity, and it seems that Bethesda was listening.

While the gameplay changes are definitely exciting, they’re nothing compared to the final announcement made at the end of the trailer: Starfield is finally getting its very own Creation Kit as part of the June 9 update.

Starfield June 9 update: Creation Kit explained

If you’re a seasoned mod user, you probably know how exciting it is that Starfield is getting a Creation Kit. For everyone else, here’s the abridged and jargon-free version of why it’s such a big deal.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 are the two most modded games on Nexus Mods by a huge margin, and Starfield doesn’t even come close to either. This isn’t because modders were less interested in Starfield, but because without a Creation Kit, the changes modders could make to the game were very limited.

Now that Starfield has a Creation Kit, the floodgates have completely opened, and modders have free range to do Bethesda’s dirty work. It’s easy to think of mods as only lore-breaking gimmicks or cheats if you aren’t in the modding scene, but in actuality, mods have a fantastic track record of fixing bugs, enhancing immersion, and just generally making games feel more polished and complete.

Even more than the upcoming DLC and the internal updates to the game made by Bethesda, I wholeheartedly expect the Creation Kit to be the thing that’s most likely to boost Starfield‘s popularity into the levels of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.