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All eyes from the Starfield community were on this year's Xbox Games Showcase, hoping for some sort of an update on what's coming to the space RPG. Alas, we didn't get a single peep about the next DLC in Bethesda's newest IP over the entire two hour livestream, leading to a huge wave of disappointment among the playerbase.
An avalanche of posts on the Starfield subreddit began as soon as the stream finished, despairing at the lack of a roadmap. Without even a suggestion of more DLC arriving in the near future, people are starting to think the studio’s priorities are elsewhere.
One poster goes so far as to thank modders for expanding Starfield in lieu of what's starting to feel like developer apathy. "Thank you to all the modders out there who have kept the game on life support. I fear, though, we're getting dangerously close to the heart monitor flatlining," they state.
An illustrative look at Bethesda’s track record demonstrates why players are so forlorn. In the past, the company's major games have gotten up to five full-on DLC packs within the first year of release. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 were all well supported in the first 18 months of their availability.
Meanwhile, Starfield has gotten a single substantial dose of downloadable content in the form of Shattered Space, which came out in September 2024, over a year after launch. A further DLC expansion hasn't been formally announced, but director Todd Howard previously told YouTuber MrMattyPlays that "there will be another one," and hinted that Bethesda would be "more or less" aiming for annual expansions for "hopefully a very long time."
Without a release window, however, it's looking like the next DLC will almost certainly arrive over two years from when people started playing the spacefaring open-world adventure.
There’s been some rationalizing, with it being brought up that Howard has mentioned before he wants to resist announcing anything until there's something tangible to show. Having now sat through seven years of questions about The Elder Scrolls 6, he probably wants to avoid doing so for anything else on the slate.
Still, it's worrying, since Starfield hasn't been the groundbreaking new chapter anyone really hoped or thought it would be. Marketing emails raised eyebrows about the Xbox livestream, creating what would become false hope for onlookers.
It doesn't help that Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-gestating Metroidvania sequel, got a bit of news after years of pretty much nothing, rubbing salt in the wound. Some worry has lingered over how much support Starfield will get overall compared to the surer bets in Bethesda's pipeline, and the silence not providing any relief.
Be sure to check out our roundup of everything announced during Summer Game Fest 2025.
