Six months later, Starfield’s modding scene is still lost in space

Shortly after Starfield released last summer, my initial discussions with friends and colleagues about its future tended to skew positive. Within six months, we hoped, Starfield’s empty cosmos would no longer be quite so empty thanks to the same thriving modding scene that’s made games like The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim so timeless.

Regardless of whether or not we were being optimistic at the time, our predictions mostly fell flat.

Yes, a decently-sized modding community rapidly emerged in September and has since continued pushing out new technical features and content replacement mods for the PC version of Starfield. Starfield Nexus has over 6,641 individual mods as of the time of writing this article. But six months have now passed since Starfield’s release with no further mention of the long-awaited Starfield Creation Kit 2, which, minus a few whisperings about closed Creation Kit tests on r/Starfield, still feels lightyears away.

As in past Bethesda titles, the Creation Kit 2 will be a necessary tool for longevity, allowing PC users the ability to generate mods that populate both the Xbox and PC versions of Starfield with brand-new quests, areas, NPCs, items, spaceships, combat encounters, and entire sprawling storylines.

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Yet, with so much turbulence surrounding Starfield’s reputation amongst fans — including a few of the most popular modders of past Bethesda games renouncing their support altogether — I’m at least a little bit concerned about whether or not it’ll end up achieving the longevity it was seemingly designed around.

Dwindling player counts

Much of my initial excitement about Starfield was, admittedly, propped up on the assumption that all Bethesda games eventually foster vibrant modding communities. I figured modders would inevitably come in and fix