Bethesda’s Starfield is not only getting Shattered Space, but another major story expansion plus at least a further year of support.
In an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard announced plans to release a second significant expansion to Starfield.
“We’re planning for the one after this. There will be another one,” said Howard.
The second story expansion was discussed in the context of a “more-or-less” annual cycle of updates.
Shattered Space is Starfield’s “year one” expansion, due out roughly a year after the original game, although the exact release date is yet to be announced.
This next story expansion will be the game’s big “year two” addition, suggesting it could arrive in late 2025.
Howard says major work on Shattered Space began as Starfield itself came out.
“We started actual dev work when we finished Starfield, in September or early October,” says Howard.
He also suggested Bethesda Game Studios still has plans to commit to the game for the long haul, saying this continued development of Starfield will continue “hopefully a very long time”.
The odds are not necessarily in Starfield’s favour, though. According to SteamDB, more than double the number of people currently play Skyrim, compared to Starfield, on PC gaming platform Steam.
Bethesda may be hoping the factor that gave Skyrim such a long shelf life will also inject some new life into Starfield: user mods.
The game’s Creation Kit, which lets players create and distribute their own Starfield content more easily, was released as part of the game’s June 2024 update.
It has not arrived without controversy, though. The Creations platform lets modders charge for their content, and the pricing of some of the available content has caused a backlash online.
A slew of negative reviews on Steam has led to the game reaching the “mostly negative” category for its user reviews.
Howard touched on the response in his interview with MrMattyPlays.
“We see the feedback, and it’s not what we want at all… I do think we’re going to take a look at that and how we deliver content,” he said.
“Our view is a lot of [modders] have gone from hobbyist to professional and it’s part of our job to make sure they can do that, and get paid.”
The focus of fans’ ire is a mission called the Vulture, which costs 700 Creations credits. 1,000 credits cost £8.79 from the Xbox Store, making the single mission equivalent to around £6.10.
This platform first launched in 2017 as Creation Club, for Skyrim and Fallout 4. It provided easy access to mods for console players.
