Despite being released over a decade before Starfield, Skyrim has outsold the former on Steam for the last several weeks.
Every week, Steam publishes a list of their top 100 games by weekly revenue. Skyrim was one spot ahead of Starfield for the week of Dec. 19-25, and over 30 spots ahead of it for the week of Dec. 26 to Jan. 2. So far in 2024, the games haven’t changed from their previous ranks in any meaningful way, indicating the out-performance will continue for at least the immediate future.
What’s even more surprising is that this list is generated by revenue, not by number of copies sold. That matters because Skyrim is currently $7.99 on Steam, while a temporary sale for Starfield has dropped its price tag down to $48.99. Even with the temporary savings, Starfield still costs six times as much as Skyrim. The 2011 Bethesda game isn’t just selling more copies than the studios latest—it’s doing so by a large enough margin to make up for a massive difference in price per unit.
In most cases, it wouldn’t be fair to compare a game to Skyrim and cast judgment accordingly, but that changes when the game is from the same studio and has an immediately noticeable resemblance. If you look at both games’ respective Steam reviews, you’ll see that Skyrim has a Very Positive all-time rating, while Starfield‘s is Mixed. Bethesda has been using the same gameplay formula for Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and now Starfield for over two decades now, and fans have never seemed to mind all that much. There’s a myriad of potential reasons that this shift has occurred, and while it is possible that it is just genuine fatigue with the same formula, I don’t personally think that’s the case.
Players aren’t tired of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout formula. Personally, that formula is exactly what made me so excited for Starfield in the first place. Having played the game for just over 100 hours myself, I found it to simply be lacking the quirky exploration and stylish, almost weird charm that we can normally expect from Bethesda games. Given the fact that people are purchasing (and playing) Skyrim at a higher rate than Starfield, I think this backwards evolution in writing and encounters is the most likely cause of Starfield‘s mixed reception. If people were simply tired of the Bethesda formula, I don’t think people would be turning to Skyrim instead of Starfield—they would go elsewhere entirely.
Starfield is set to receive major updates throughout 2024, and I’m personally in the camp that’s hoping the game can redeem itself. In its current state I do enjoy the game, but I can’t in good conscience call it anything other than a downgrade from Bethesda’s usual quality.
