Bethesda Is Responding to Negative Reviews of Starfield on Steam

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Bethesda has taken the unusual step for a triple-A video game maker of responding to negative reviews of Starfield on Steam.

As spotted by Project Zomboid developer Andy Hodgetts and flagged in a tweet, representatives of the Microsoft-owned company have been replying to negative reviews on Valve’s platform since early November, seemingly trying to tackle Starfield’s ‘mixed’ user review rating of 69%.

Many of the negative reviews echo common complaints with the sprawling space game, like this one posted on November 6 from a player with 56 hours in Starfield.

Boring and overrated. There is a wide universe to explore, filled mostly with empty planets. I understand. They have to do that to sell you on the idea that this is a whole universe, but that doesn’t make the game more fun. You can land on any planet and explore the copy/pasted locations. You will see the exact same locations from one end of the universe to the other and everywhere in between. A hodgepodge of messy, slapped together mechanics. Bloated skill trees, ‘exploring’, crafting, base building, an RPG, an FPS, a space opera. Starfield doesn’t know what it wants to be. As wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle. You can explore everywhere but why would you want to?

This review sparked a response from someone called “Bethesda_Kraken [developer]”, who signed off their post as coming from Bethesda Customer Support:

Greetings,Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty.Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that’s not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.” The intention of Starfield’s exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.To provide feedback to development for Starfield, please feel free to submit your feedback using this form here.Never stop exploring!Bethesda Customer Support

It’s a pretty stock response, and quotes Ashley Cheng, Bethesda’s managing director, who uttered the phrase “when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored” in a New York Times feature published ahead of Starfield’s September launch.

Here’s a more recent response, again from the busy Bethesda_Kraken, to a negative review from a Starfield player with over 76 hours on record.

The story is as generic as it gets and the gameplay gets boring. I wish there was a reason to even bother exploring planets and building outposts. Everything is fun until you do it once, then it’s all a repeating, soulless chore.

And here’s the developer response, posted on November 27, 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 to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter.There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!Never stop exploring!Bethesda Customer Support

Here’s another example, but this time from someone called Bethesda_FalcoYamaoka, who also signs off as from Bethesda Customer Support:

Greetings,Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Starfield!We are sorry that you do not like landing on different planets and are finding many of them empty.Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design — but that’s not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.” The intention of Starfield’s exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet. Most quests will also vary on your character’s skills and decisions, massively changing the outcome of your playthrough. Try creating different characters with backgrounds and characteristics that clash or are oppositive of your previous character. You will feel like you are playing a totally different game. Put points in different skills from a character you’ve previously created, and you are now faced with completely different decisions to make and difficulties to encounter. There are so many layers to Starfield, that you will find things you’ve never knew were possible after playing for hundreds of hours.Even after completing the Main Story, your adventure doesn’t end! You can continue onto New Game+ to keep exploring Starfield and all that is out there!We are still actively working on this game and will be for a long time yet to come. If you would like to provide feedback straight to development, you can do so here: https://beth.games/46e5g8EWe want to make Starfield awesome for everyone who wants to venture out into it!Best Regards,Bethesda Customer Support.

While indie video game developers respond to Steam reviews all the time, big publishers like Bethesda rarely get stuck in, which makes these responses, however robotic, noteworthy. Why would Bethesda bother? It may be trying to steer the Starfield sentiment in a more positive direction, mindful of that ‘mixed’ user review. Starfield is currently the lowest-rated Bethesda game ever on Valve’s platform, and management will no doubt be keen to address that. Of course, there’s a risk that comes from responding to negative reviews, too, particularly when you use them to insist landing on empty planets isn’t boring.

I mean, you can reference that the actual moon is empty if you like and that astronauts who landed there did not find this emptiness boring, but there’s a big difference between landing on the actual moon and doing the same in a videogame 😉

— Andy Hodgetts (@CaptainBinky) November 8, 2023

Bethesda has updated Starfield a number of times since its launch, which saw 10 million players in three weeks. The latest patch, 1.8.86, added DLSS Support and the ability to eat food on sight. The studio already has a Starfield post-launch story expansion pack in the works, called Shattered Space, and development chief Todd Howard told IGN in an interview ahead of the Starfield Direct that Bethesda plans to release “a lot” of add-on content for the space exploration game.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of add-on content for Starfield,” Howard said. “We love doing it. Our fans love it. We’re going to do a story expansion pack that’s going to be coming. Our plan is to do things of varying sizes, and we’ve done a lot of that in our previous games, so it’s something that we really like doing, our fans like. So despite the size of the game, there’s still things we want to add as far as features in the future or stories and things like that. Hopefully it’s going to continue for a long time that way.”

For more, check out our complete walkthrough as well as our guide to all of the ships in Starfield.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.