Starfield is a single-player game, despite some confusing messages from Bethesda and Xbox. There is no multiplayer element in the game. Yet. Although the ‘this is a single player game’ message attached to Starfield is unclear, the confusion is easy to understand. During initial releases, Starfield was mentioned as a single player game, but there was also talk of the ‘single player campaign’, implying that there was no single player campaign. After Fallout 76’s multiplayer debut and publishers generally love to make money more easily, it’s easy to imagine that Starfield could progress in the same way, so here’s everything we know about Starfield’s single-player game state.
What single player and multiplayer modes will Starfield have?
The only mode we currently know Starfield will have is a single-player campaign in the same vein as Skyrim or Fallout 4. 2020 interviewIn passing, Game Director Todd Howard referred to it as a “single-player game” (check out the 45-minute mark exactly), and we’ve seen no reason to suspect anything has changed in the time since then. For example look at the game on Steam and it is listed as a ‘single player game’.
Likewise, there’s no indication that the game will require any online capacity, but we can’t be so sure about that. Some single-player games still have a DRM element or need to be online for some reason, but right now there’s no reason to think Starfield will be one of them, especially when its siblings single-player games never need the same.
And no, there’s no multiplayer element that we know of, whether it’s co-op, competitive, or even local couch co-op. There’s an argument that Bethesda clearly wouldn’t be very viable in the kind of experience Starfield wanted it to be – something personal for the player with the emphasis on world-building and role-playing. Fuck anyone waiting for the Starfield ship customization to be finished, right?
Of course, it’s entirely possible that additional features and game modes for singleplayer or multiplayer will be added later. Online spaceship arena combat seems perfectly viable as an idea, and with the ever-popular modding community always popping up around Bethesda’s RPGs, you’ll probably want to connect to the internet at some point.
