Hours before Starfield officially launches, it's already the top game on Twitch with 350K viewers

Close-up of man grinning with a cowboy hat
(Image credit: Tyler C. / Bethesda)

Starfield's pressurized doors are open for Twitch streamers a few hours before its early access release and it's already shot to the top of the concurrent viewer charts on the platform.

Bethesda's sci-fi RPG is currently holding onto around 350,000 viewers
(with a 500K peak), which places it right under the Just Chatting category. Top streamers, like Shroud, CohhCarnage, and AnnieFuchsia, already made their characters and are off completing missions and combing rooms for resources.

One streamer, Jabo, is attempting to visit every planet in the game, of which there are over 1,000. They seem like the right person for the job though: Jabo does challenge runs in Bethesda games on their YouTube channel. Their most popular video is of a modded version of Fallout 4 where every time they get a kill, their weapon is swapped to a random one.

With this many hands on Starfield though, the bugs are starting to fill up the popular Twitch clips page. It may be the least buggy Bethesda RPG to our staff, but there's still some jank here and there.

Here's some of my favorite Starfield bugs on Twitch so far:

  • Here's companion Sarah Morgan vibrating with excitement on Auronplay's stream 
  • Two characters on Shroud's stream activate their personal grav drives and launch into space 
  • This background lady judges Lirik's outfit with zero subtlety

RPG diehards might find some use in watching these early Starfield streams. Plenty of streamers are spending time picking character backgrounds and experimenting with skills in the opening section. Like every other Bethesda game, you'll benefit from knowing how these all work before jumping in.

In our Starfield review, Chris said it "never feels as instantly engrossing and transporting as Oblivion or Skyrim or as wild and weird as the Fallout games," but that he's having fun exploring 90 hours in.

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Associate Editor

Tyler has covered games, games culture, and hardware for over a decade before joining PC Gamer as Associate Editor. He's done in-depth reporting on communities and games as well as criticism for sites like Polygon, Wired, and Waypoint. He's interested in the weird and the fascinating when it comes to games, spending time probing for stories and talking to the people involved. Tyler loves sinking into games like Final Fantasy 14, Overwatch, and Dark Souls to see what makes them tick and pluck out the parts worth talking about. His goal is to talk about games the way they are: broken, beautiful, and bizarre.