Bethesda continues to hold out high hopes for Starfield, with a seemingly busy roadmap and the release of a new DLC per year. After the disappointing Shattered Space, the next one, codenamed "Starborn," could soon be released. Except that players' hearts don't seem to be in it, after legendary titles like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. A former developer of the game shares his opinion on the reason for such a cold reception to Bethesda's latest space franchise.
Problem of lack of stars in the eyes for a former Starfield developer
Despite Bethesda's biggest launch ever, with 6 million players in one day (probably largely thanks to Xbox Game Pass), Starfield failed to keep its explorers for long. This was due in part to numerous missing features at launch, and an exploration of the galaxy deemed "hollow" by many players. At the 2025 Game Developer Conference, PC Gamer was able to gather the opinion of Nate Purkeypile, former developer of Starfield, Skyrim, and Fallout 3, on the reasons for the generally rather cold reception from the community.
According to him, Bethesda's latest game greatly disappointed the studio's fans due to a significant lack of freedom granted to developers. "On Skyrim, we were free to create things from side projects. Werewolves or Blackreach, for example, were not planned at all from the start. Many of the things that are iconic in gaming today are the result of the developers' passion and the freedom to bring such projects to fruition. The former developer told PC Gamer that, for the development of Starfield, the teams had to follow strict specifications established by management..
A game of proportions too galactic for its own good?
Nate Purkeypile also regrets the fact that Bethesda grew too much, to the point of becoming a huge machine with little room for maneuver. I enjoyed working with teams of 60 to 110 people on Skyrim and Fallout 3 than when the studio kept growing. The crazy things we could get away with on Skyrim risked causing you big problems on Starfield, because everything now has a cost. Which I can understand, because you can't let 500 people do whatever they want, it would be chaos. But it's also less interesting to work on such big projects..
In light of these revelations surrounding the development of Starfield, should we be worried about the highly anticipated The Elder Scrolls 6 or a for the moment hypothetical Fallout 5? Unfortunately, you'll probably have to be very patient to find out.
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