Bethesda is still responding to individual negative Starfield reviews on Steam, over two months after the RPG first launched.
Earlier this month, Starfield dropped to a 'Mixed' overall user review rating on Steam a few months out from launching, with some players crowning it "Bethesda's most mediocre game to date." Now, Bethesda is taking matters into its own hands and pushing back against some of the negative reviews.
As first drawn attention to by the Twitter user below, Bethesda's community service team is responding to individual Starfield user reviews on Steam by praising the game. "Starfield is an RPG with hundreds of hours of quests to complete and characters to meet," one developer review reads in response to a negative user review after nearly 30 hours played.
- After a hard launch, Hyper Light Breaker dev says negative reviews were key because "you can’t pay for QA of that caliber! That all comes from true giving a damn"
- Former Starfield dev says the space RPG "could have existed without those" surplus loading screens, with many added after he left production
Bethesda is responding to negative Starfield reviews on Steam. Absolutely bizarre if you ask me and despite media attention this hasn't stopped, the last response is from today pic.twitter.com/ay589tg8ccNovember 28, 2023
"While there may be loading screens in between fast travelling, just consider the amount of data for the expansive gameplay that is procedurally generated to load flawlessly in under 3 seconds," the same response continues. "We believe that shortcoming will not hinder our players from getting lost in the world we created."
"Given the immense size of Starfield, we felt it made more sense to be able to use your Grav Drive to jump to other solar systems," reads another Bethesda response to a user writing that it's "unpleasant to play." The developer adds that the "intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed."
Another user writes that Starfield is a "step back" for Bethesda and "falls flat" in pretty much every department. "Quests were made to be completed in several ways. You get to decide who lives and who dies at crucial points of the story, as well as how to go about meeting any given objective," Bethesda's community team writes in response to the review.
The most recent Bethesda response looks like it was published earlier today, November 28. From what we can see, the response to negative reviews has been going on throughout November. It's an almost-unprecedented move - certainly one I've never seen for a game of this size - and it doesn't seem to be being particularly well-received.
Completely extraordinary that a major publisher would engage players individually to tell them that, actually, they’re mistaken if they think the game’s boring. https://t.co/h8kOrxSmwlNovember 28, 2023
Check out our guide to the best Starfield mods if you're after some essential community tweaks for the huge RPG.
