Starfield is a single-player game and hasn't got any multiplayer features, which might come as a bit of an annoyance to those hoping for a chance to crew a ship with their friends. Although it is still worth discussing the possibilities of multiplayer and playing Starfield online with friends. Frankly you shouldn't get your hopes up, but with the power of mods and future updates, at the very least we can discuss the question properly as we answer: is Starfield single player or multiplayer? Or, hopefully, both?
Recent updates
At the time of updating on November 17, 2023, there is no multiplayer in Starfield and no indication from Bethesda that it will be added there will be either.
Starfield single player and multiplayer options explained
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Starfield has no multiplayer or online coop mode at time of writing, only a single player, and unfortunately there's no indication right now that that's going to change any time soon. Bethesda rarely make in-house online games, barring the occasional outlier like Fallout 76, so not including a multiplayer mode is somewhat normal for them. Right now, the game is both single-player and offline - so at least you don't need to be wired up to the internet to play it.
There's also no indication that the game will gain an official online mode at any point in the future. Admittedly, it hasn't been officially ruled out as far as we know, but Bethesda haven't mentioned the possibility and we don't really expect that to change.
Finally, what about the possibility of Starfield mods, altering the game on PC to add a multiplayer or co-op element? As far as we know there's not any stable or functioning mods to do this right now, though it is still relatively early in the game's life. However, it also seems like a major and potentially impossible undertaking - because Starfield isn't a full, coherent map, but instead a series of interconnected worlds and procedurally generated locations, this makes the whole thing even harder to set up - being in entirely different worlds light years apart feels like something very hard to orchestrate from a technological standpoint.
It's possible that there might be some online stat sharing, and I'm sure there will be some ambitious Starfield multiplayer mod attempts. But intentionally, and for the time being, Starfield is a single player experience.
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