Starfield peaks at over 230,000 concurrent players on Steam

Bethesda's highly anticipated Starfield has finally entered early access, with over 230,000 players in-game just a few hours after it became playable.

The details:

• The space RPG reached a peak of 234,502 players on August 31 at 10 p.m. ET, according to SteamDB, all of whom own the game's more expensive premium or constellation editions. This high will almost certainly be surpassed again on September 6, when the game's five-day early access period ends and standard edition owners can finally get their hands on it.
• So far, it appears that the game has not only been a commercial success but also a critical success, with an average of 88 out of 100 from 99 reviews on OpenCritic and 94% of critics recommending the game. Many reviews praised Bethesda for keeping the sandbox RPG style of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls while creating a brand new world to explore with brand new mechanics like space combat.
• Starfield has also been a hit on Twitch, with players given permission to stream gameplay as soon as the review embargo was lifted. SullyGnome reports that 3,577,958 hours of content have been consumed, with a peak of 552,031 concurrent viewers across all Starfield streams on the site.

More gaming news:

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• Larian Studios has announced that it has found a solution to the technical issues that have been preventing the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 from being released. The split-screen co-op mode will be removed from the Xbox Series S version of the game, though Microsoft has stated that it hopes to re-introduce it in a future update.