Bethesda has taken an unusual step for a triple-rated video game maker by responding to Starfield’s negative reviews on Steam.
As noticed Zomboid Project Developer Andy Hodgetts and noted on Twitter, representatives of the Microsoft-owned company have been responding to negative feedback about Valve’s platform since early November amid a “mixed” user rating of Starfield at 69%.
Many of the negative reviews echo common complaints about the sprawling space game, like this one posted on November 6th from a player with 56 hours in Starfield.
Sad and overrated. You have to explore a vast universe filled with mostly empty planets. I understand. They have to do this to sell you on the idea that it’s a whole universe, but it doesn’t make the game any more fun. You can land on any planet and explore copy/pasted locations. You will see the same places from one end of the universe to the other and everywhere in between. A hodgepodge of dirty, stuck together mechanics. Bloated skill trees, “exploration”, crafting, base building, RPG, first person shooter, space opera. Starfield doesn’t know what it wants to be. Wide as the ocean and deep as a pool. You can explore everywhere, but why would you?
IGN’s Twenty Questions – Guess!
This review prompted a response from a person named “Bethesda_Kraken [developer]” who captioned their post as Bethesda Customer Support:
greetings
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
We’re sorry you don’t like landing on different planets and find many of them empty.
Some of Starfield’s planets are designed to be empty — but it’s not boring. “When the astronauts flew to the moon, there was nothing there. They definitely weren’t bored.” Starfield exploration aims to make players feel small and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that have the resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.
To provide feedback on Starfield development, feel free to submit your feedback using this form here.
Never stop exploring!
Bethesda Customer Support
That’s a pretty common answer, and he quotes Bethesda CEO Ashley Cheng as saying, “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored,” in a New York Times article published ahead of Starfield’s September launch.
Here’s a more recent response, again from busy Bethesda_Kraken, to a negative review from a Starfield player with over 76 hours logged.
The story is so generic that the gameplay becomes boring. I wish there was a reason to even worry about exploring planets and building outposts. It’s all fun until you do it once, then it’s all repetitive, soulless work.
And here’s the developer’s response, published on November 27th, the same day as the review.
greetings
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
You can fly, you can shoot, you can mine, you can loot!
Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary based on your character’s skills and decisions, greatly altering the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that contradict or are the opposite of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a completely different game. Put points into different skills of the character you created earlier and now you will have to make completely different decisions and difficulties.
There are so many layers to Starfield that after hundreds of hours of gameplay, you’ll find things you didn’t even know existed.
Even after completing the main story, your adventure will not end! You can go to New Game+ to continue exploring Starfield and all that it has to offer!
Never stop exploring!
Bethesda Customer Support
Here’s another example, but this time from someone named Bethesda_FalcoYamaoka, who also signs up as Bethesda Customer Support:
greetings
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
We’re sorry you don’t like landing on different planets and find many of them empty.
Some of Starfield’s planets are designed to be empty — but it’s not boring. “When the astronauts flew to the moon, there was nothing there. They definitely weren’t bored.” Starfield exploration aims to make players feel small and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that have the resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.
Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary based on your character’s skills and decisions, greatly altering the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that contradict or are the opposite of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a completely different game. Put points into different skills of the character you created earlier, and now you will have to make completely different decisions and difficulties. There are so many layers to Starfield that after hundreds of hours of play, you’ll find things you didn’t even know existed.
Even after completing the main story, your adventure will not end! You can go to New Game+ to continue exploring Starfield and all that it has to offer!
We are still actively working on this game and will be for a long time. If you’d like to provide feedback right before development, you can do so here: https://beth.games/46e5g8E
We want to make Starfield amazing for everyone who wants to visit it!
Best regards,
Bethesda Customer Support.
Here’s Bethesda_Kraken’s response to negative feedback from a player who couldn’t get over Starfield’s much-maligned loading screens:
hello
Thank you for taking the time to leave your review and we’re sorry to hear that you were disappointed that you saw a lot of loading screens while playing the game.
While there may be loading screens in between fast moves, just consider the amount of data for the extensive gameplay, which is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in less than 3 seconds. We believe that lack will not prevent our players from getting lost in the world we have created.
We’d love to hear about your experience with bugs to see if we can help: https://beth.games/46e5g8E. After selecting the issue type, continue to click Next at the bottom of the screen until you proceed to submit a ticket.
You can submit further feedback to development here: https://beth.games/46e5g8E
Never stop exploring!
Bethesda Customer Support
And let’s end with Bethesda_Kraken’s response to the negative review, which notes that “requiring fast travel instead of space flight makes the game feel less like an open world game.”
greetings
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!
Given the sheer size of the Starfield, we thought it would make more sense to use your Grav Drive to travel to other solar systems. The ability to freely fly between planets is still there, and you can travel from one planet to another and land without having to open the map when you use the scanner. However, an expedition like traversing the solar system requires a leap.
Remember that fast travel also has its advantages, as you can do it quickly while trying to complete quests and you will always see your ship launch and land, allowing you to appreciate all the little details that make your custom ship unique.
Some of Starfield’s planets are designed to be empty – but it’s not boring. “When the astronauts flew to the moon, there was nothing there. They definitely weren’t bored.” Starfield exploration aims to make players feel small and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that have the resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.
To provide feedback on the development of Starfield, please submit your feedback using this form here: https://beth.games/45BDMKb
Never stop exploring!
Bethesda Customer Support
While indie video game developers respond to Steam reviews all the time, big publishers like Bethesda rarely get stuck, making these responses, however robotic, worth noting. Why would Bethesda bother? Maybe he’s trying to steer Starfield’s sentiment in a more positive direction, mindful of the “mixed” user reviews. Starfield is currently Bethesda’s lowest-rated game on Valve’s platform, and management will no doubt be looking to address that. Of course, there is a risk that comes with responding to negative reviews, especially if you use them to insist that landing on empty planets isn’t boring.
I mean, you can refer to the moon being empty if you want, and that the astronauts who landed there didn’t find the emptiness boring, but there’s a big difference between landing on a real moon and landing on a video game 😉
— Andy Hodgetts (@CaptainBinky) November 8, 2023
Bethesda has updated Starfield several times since its launch, which reached 10 million players in three weeks. The last patch, 1.8.86, added DLSS support and the ability to eat food in place. The studio is already developing a Starfield story expansion pack called Shattered Space, and head of development Todd Howard told IGN in an interview ahead of the Starfield Direct that Bethesda plans to release “a lot” of additional content for the space exploration game.
“We’re going to be creating a lot of additional content for Starfield,” Howard said. “We love to do it. Our fans love it. We are going to make a story expansion pack that will be on sale. Our plan is to do things in different sizes, and we’ve done a lot of that in our previous games, so that’s something that we really enjoy doing and our fans. So despite the size of the game, we still want to add something in terms of features in the future or stories and things like that. I hope it will continue like this for a long time.”
To learn more, check out our complete walkthrough, as well as our guide to all ships in Starfield.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.