Starfield, a game mainly about space travel/exploration, couldn’t convince a chunk of its players to leave the surface of the tutorial planet.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has. But just how many of the game’s millions of players stopped playing before finishing the first mission?
Well, according to achievement stats from TrueAchievements, around 25%! The For All, Into the Starfield achievement is awarded the first time you go to space, which happens maybe 30 minutes into the game. After a brief tutorial and some combat, you meet one of the game’s major NPCs, and he gives you his ship.
As soon as you leave the surface of the planet and take to space, the achievement should unlock. According to the numbers, however, 75% of players did that, which seems a little low considering how early into the game that happens, and how practically unavoidable the achievement is.
People do play games offline. Personally, I don’t care about achievements. They mean nothing to me, except knowing that the game developer is tracking my play through, which I hate.
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Has this writer never used Steam or is he just unaware how many people buy games they don’t actually play
Firstly: If you had ever used Steam, you’d know that Steam differentiates between “have game in the library” and “have previously played a game”. A bought game that was never launched, doesn’t show up in these stats.
Secondly: It’s clear you did not bother to read the article. “The numbers take into account players on Xbox, as well as those playing the Game Pass/Windows Store version of the game on PC.” The 25% number isn’t even from Steam.
I have used steam for 12 years and I never knew that.
In the Steam client, you have this box on the right:
And when you click on View All, you get something like this:
Dont think I ever read those then again I mainly just play games and collect a million unplayed ones
gamepads makes it a lot easier to start then get bored too
Achievement % stats are so comically skewed by various factors that they mean basically nothing. There’s an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
There’s an achievement in Minecraft for literally just opening your inventory for the first time but only 60% of Xbox players have it.
12,7% of Amid Evil players are in-game forever:
That achievement is likely to gather more accurate statistics due to the problems you mention. The Amid Evil devs can now confidently say that 12.7% of players who own the game have never started it. Meaning they can subtract that number from other achievement percentages to get a better idea of how many people are progressing certain ways.
The same is likely true for Minecraft’s inventory achievement, though that’s slightly less useful, as some players may make it a little further without opening the inventory and then stop forever.
Leaving the first planet in Stafield takes a little more effort, but not much. It’s safe to say that some of the 25% of players who haven’t done it haven’t ever opened the game. But that number will probably be close to 10%.
I think the percentages are calculated from players that actually launched the game, not from people who own it.
Steam does not count games that have never been launched. For 12.7% of the players the game probably quit under a bit different circumstances: game crashed or they lost internet connectivity.
Starfield has been out for long enough now that anyone interested in playing it likely already has.
Not even close, especially not in the year that also brought us Baldur’s Gate and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. How much free time does this writer think everyone has?
Yup, definitely interested in Starfield. But at the moment still enjoying Act I of BG3, Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0 and DLC are right around the corner and after I’ve finished those Cityies: Skylines 2 will be available. So I’ll probably have time for Starfield somewhere early 2024, depending on if my recurring Satisfactory itch hits before that. But by that time more official and unofficial bugfixes and QoL mods will be available, so I’m fine with waiting a bit longer to play. This year is just filled with too many goodies. 😁
Yeah this one is most definitely back burnered cause it didn’t launch with DLSS and Bethesda always has a million bugs. I’ll wait for the mods to fix everything and play the polished games first.
I haven’t even got around to Sea of Stars, for pity’s sake
As much as they do, probably
I don’t have this game yet but I know out of the box modding any of the Fallout or Elder Scrolls games disables achievements (but you can get around this with other mods), so I assume it’s the same here. Bethesda games being some of the most modded games of all time I wouldn’t be surprised if even a lot of first time players were using one or two mods and having their achievements disabled.
I already had mods that disabled achievements by then just to fix this mess.
Runs and looks great now, ~15 mods to get there.
I think that 25% would be comprised of people that bought the game and haven’t had much time to play, or use console command right away and disable achievements. Speedrunners, modmakers, and general hackers would use console commands liberally as they should be the same as Fallout/Elder Scrolls games.
Terrible article they misses so many factors that play into this.
If I use a sample size of me and use my library of a measurement, it’s probably more than 25% of games I haven’t even launched let alone completing the first mission.
People who have never launched the game aren’t counted in these statistics.
My first game had achievements deactivated from the beginning. I had to ditch that game. Then download a mod to activate achievements, and start over.
I really wanted to but my game kept crashing like right after the part where you create a character. Maybe that has something to do with it.
