Bethesda Game Studios may have a reputation for putting out bug-ridden games with barely functioning UIs and then leaving it all for modders to fix, but it generally does this with stunningly wonderful games in which tolerating the jank is more than worthwhile. Starfield, however, is the studio’s first big first-party miss since, wow, 2006’s IHRA Drag Racing: Sportsman Edition. What’s more striking is that the space-faring epic has, since its September 6, 2023 release, put out a single desultory expansion pack, and that was well over a year ago now. New rumors of a rejuvenated version to accompany the game’s arrival on PS5 next year do little to squash the sense that the disappointing game has become a low priority for its creators.
Starfield released to widespread disappointment just over two years ago, followed by the most peculiarly barren post-launch period of any Bethesda game in recent memory. After a year of doldrums, the reveal of that first expansion—Shattered Space—looked so promising. At an early showing during Gamescom, the horror vibes of the new content appeared compelling, and it felt like this could be the game’s new beginning. But instead the DLC was absolutely slated by reviewers and players, only further cementing the game’s reputation as a dud.
Of course, because this is Bethesda, people still held out hope. While The Elder Scrolls Online was developed by a different internal team (Zenimax Online Studios), that game had the most abysmal beta and launched in 2014 in a pretty crappy state, but vast amounts of work were put in to turn it around, and it’s now a beloved MMO that still thrives a decade later. Surely, some might have reasonably thought, the same kind of effort would be put into Starfield, bringing about the same reversal of fortune? Surely we could expect to see a trickle of new quests, plots, and incremental improvements until it was panel-beaten into a game to place alongside Skyrim and Fallout 3? Yet since Shattered Space‘s arrival last year, we’ve had diddly-squat.
The whole of 2025 has passed without not just any new content for the game, but not even the announcement of anything to come. Instead (apart from a video promise that an unspecified new expansion was in the works), all we’ve heard are rumors that the game is being prepared for a 2026 PlayStation 5 release following Microsoft’s decision to abandon console exclusivity, but without any reason provided as to why PS5 players should want it any more than anyone else. Now, word is out that the PlayStation release will coincide with a “2.0” version of Starfield that will also come to Xbox and PC. But even this might need to be met with muted hope.
Via Gaming Bolt, leaks have appeared of the revamped version of the game, shown to various influencers and the like in a closed-door showcase. Fan-run X account Starfield News posted to say the event recently took place, with the claim that it was “making those who attended very excited for the future of the game.” However, YouTuber Luke Stephens posted to X to say he’d spoken to a number of people who attended, and that people should “temper expectations.”
I’ve had a few people reach out who claim to have either been present at the event or helped put it on. They are consistent in the following ways:
Temper expectations. Things are being improved but from what I’m hearing this probably isn’t a Cyberpunk 2.0 scale update. https://t.co/fjHpMCSadC
— Luke Stephens (@LukeStephens) December 17, 2025
“Things are being improved,” Stephens says, “but from what I’m hearing this probably isn’t a Cyberpunk 2.0 scale update.” That’s a reference to the way CD Projekt entirely overhauled the disastrously poor launch version of Cyberpunk 2077 to make it one of the best-loved RPGs of all time, and Bethesda can’t really fall short of that if they want to save things.
Bethesda’s complete silent about all of this, with even the PS5 version’s existence never officially announced, speaks volumes about how little interest there must be in giving players a reason to get excited. That’s on top of the failure to put out any new content in a year. In fact, Starfield is barely getting patched these days, with only two updates in the whole of 2025, both just adding stability fixes, one in May and then the slightest update imaginable in July. The latter was accompanied with the missive, “Looking ahead, we’re continuing work on future updates and will share more about the exciting things we have planned for Starfield in the coming months.”
Spoiler: they didn’t.
We have no official confirmation of this closed-door presentation of a Starfield 2.0, and have asked Bethesda if it can say whether this took place—we’ll update should we get a reply. We’ve also asked about why there’s been so little information and no new content throughout 2025.
But even if a dramatically improved revamp appears at some point in 2026 (and Luke Stephens suggests it could come significantly later in the year than people have hoped), might it already be too late? Cyberpunk 2077‘s dismal launch was not because the game itself was inherently bad, but because it ran so atrociously, with console versions so poor that it was withdrawn from sale by Sony itself. People still wanted to get at the game that was being obscured by the huge technical issues. A year and a half later, the game was finally in a state where it could run properly on console, at which point it was embraced and adored.
But Starfield‘s shortcomings aren’t a result of technical issues (although those are present, with rumors that the loading screens are to be improved in the supposed 2.0 version), but rather the way its breadth came at the cost of depth, a vastness that doesn’t hold together as a coherent whole, meaning the trademark Bethesda wonkiness becomes far more of an issue. It’s hard to see how this can be rescued without a wealth of cohesive new content, and new content appears to be the very last thing this game is getting. That the whole of 2025 could have gone by without a single significant addition speaks incredibly poorly of Bethesda’s interest in those who bought the game and maintained hope.
I get that. I can only imagine how awful it is to have spent so many years putting in so much love and effort building something so vast and intricate, only for it not to pull together in a satisfactory way. I wouldn’t want to keep having to plug away at it either, and would be far more interested to move on to The Elder Scrolls VI, or Fallout V. It’s OK to release a game and then move on. But if that’s what’s happening, you can’t be telling your dedicated fanbase about “the exciting things” that are coming up, before just disappearing into a hole.
Perhaps 2026 will reveal a Starfield that’s worth reinstalling, and finally I’ll be able to click with a game I’ve failed to connect with after three attempts. I really hope so. But it remains astonishing that 2025 saw nothing at all.
