Todd Howard says there's no Starfield 2.0 coming: The next big update is for people who already love Starfield, and if you don't, 'I don't think this is going to change that'

Ruins on Earth — (Image credit: Bethesda)

The concept of 'Starfield 2.0,' essentially a major update/overhaul of Bethesda's less-than-stellar sci-fi RPG, has been kicking around for quite a while now. Fans have been huffing the copium since at least the middle of 2025, and started hitting the pipe extra hard at the end of last year when it came to light that Bethesda had given content creators a behind-closed-doors look at what's coming next. But you should probably dial back your expectations: In a new interview with Kinda Funny, Todd Howard said the next update "is not Starfield 2.0," and warned that if you don't like the game now, that's probably not going to change.

The good news is that the long wait for actual Starfield news is almost over: Howard said Fallout has been the focus over the past several months but with that now out of the way, Bethesda is going to start talking about what's next for Starfield "really soon."

Ah, but then he dropped the hammer. "It is not Starfield 2.0. I've seen some of that—for expectation-setting, I think it's the kind of thing where, if you love Starfield, we think you're gonna love this. It's updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of meta, using outer space and things in ways that we haven't.

"But look, is Starfield something that didn't connect with you right away, or you bounced off it or found it boring in places—I don't think this is going to change that fundamentally."

It's a refreshingly frank statement if nothing else, although Bethesda might simply feel that there's no sense sacrificing any more credibility on this particular altar. Some diehard Starfield fans have been holding out hope for a turnaround akin to that of Cyberpunk 2077, which enjoyed a massive recovery campaign culminating in a 2.0 update in September 2023, three years after launch. Starfield is moving into a comparable window—it came out, coincidentally, in September 2023.

But the very big stumbling block for Bethesda is that while Cyberpunk 2077 was a phenomenal game that was broken as hell, Starfield just isn't all that great. It's not awful, but that middling reputation is pretty much carved in stone at this point, and players have long fallen away: SteamDB says there are currently four times as many people on Steam playing the 16-year-old Fallout: New Vegas than there are Starfield, and that's the sort of thing that's bound to give Bethesda leadership pause as it considers how long it wants to continue working on updates.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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