Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield is the most played RPG of the year 2023 despite Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 being the most critically acclaimed.
Based on official playtime stats from Bethesda Game Studios and Larian Studios, Starfield is the most played RPG of the year 2023, surpassing the total number of hours spent in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Players have spent a total of 452,556,984 hours in Baldur’s Gate 3, while a total of 534,823,944 hours have been spent in Starfield. As such, Bethesda’s Sci-Fi RPG has a significant lead over Larian’s title, despite the latter achieving greater critical acclaim.
It’s worth pointing out that Baldur’s Gate 3’s stats are as of December 5, 2023, while those of Starfield are as of December 20, 2023. As such, there is a 15 day differential between the two. That said, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Baldur’s Gate 3 launched out of early access on August 3, 2023, 34 days prior to Starfield’s release on September 6, 2023, which balances things out.
Baldur’s Gate 3, a 2023 role-playing video game, is the third main installment in the Baldur’s Gate series, developed and published by Larian Studios, a Belgian game developer. Based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop fantasy role-playing system, the game initially saw an early access release for macOS and Windows in October 2020. The full version became available for Windows in August 2023, followed by releases for PlayStation 5, macOS, and Xbox Series X/S later that year.
Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Players join a team of space explorers on a mission to collect mysterious artifacts across various locations in the Milky Way galaxy. The open-world setting encompasses both fictional and non-fictional planetary systems.
Set in a space-themed environment, Starfield marks Bethesda’s first new intellectual property in 25 years. Described by director Todd Howard as “Skyrim in space,” the game was developed using the Creation Engine, which was modified extensively to support its procedural generation system. The game’s development began after the launch of Fallout 4 in 2015.
