The alarm bells rang in the GameStar editorial team last week: The long-awaited open-world role-playing game Starfield has its release date on Steam from 2023 Coming soon
changed. Is that a sign of the first major shift of the year that editor-in-chief Heiko already predicted in his New Year’s forecast?
Heiko’s look into the future
2023 with Diablo 4 and Starfield? This is not guaranteed!
We firmly believed in it and immediately wrote a breaking news – only to take it offline again a short time later so that we don’t spread false panic.
Because as it turned out, the release dates for umpteen other titles such as Redfall or Ark 2 were also changed. And there’s a very simple reason for that.
What the release confusion on Steam is all about
The good news first: There is currently no acute reason to worry about a postponement at Starfield and Co. Because the conversion of the data is based on a October 2022 announced change on Steamwhich should make it easier for you to browse the shop for new games even better.
What has changed? So far, developers have been able to freely fill in the box on the shop page where the release date is displayed. Many developers used this feature to run advertising (à la Coming soon! Wishlist now!
Time is relative.
Incidentally, developers always have to enter a hidden, provisional release date on Steam. Starting this year, they must now choose one of five options for how this will be displayed on Steam
Here is an example of the possible options for a game scheduled for release on August 24th, 2023:
- Exact date: „24. August 2023“
- month and year: „August 2023“
- quarter and calendar year: “3. quarter of 2023”
- Year: „2023“
- No date: “Available Soon”
In the case of Starfield, we can currently only speculate as to why the release date Coming soon / available soon
was changed. We assume that the responsible person simply forgot the manually entered 2023 due to the new option Year
to replace. Steam therefore has the option automatically No date
selected.
Starfield
Bethesda confirms release period, fans speculate about exact date
At the beginning of the year, Bethesda even confirmed the planned release period for Starfield, only an exact date is still awaited. In the linked article you can read some exciting theories from the fans. We may find out whether one of them comes true at the planned Starfield showcase, which has not yet been scheduled.