Bethesda Resisted UE5 Pressure for Starfield to Keep Mod Support

Bethesda Game Studios faced a lot of pressure, both internally and externally, to develop Starfield using Unreal Engine 5. In the end, they decided to stick with their proprietary Creation Engine. A former Bethesda artist shared that their commitment to modding support drove this choice.

This information comes from GamesRadar, which reported on the artist’s comments about the intense push for the team to switch to Epic’s engine before Starfield’s development. The Creation Engine’s strong integration with Bethesda’s modding tools, especially the Creation Kit, ultimately influenced the studio to continue using its own technology.

This decision is crucial for a studio like Bethesda, which sees its games thrive long past their expected lifetimes thanks to community-generated content. For instance, Skyrim, created with the Creation Engine, launched in 2011 but still attracts active modders in 2026. If Bethesda had switched to Unreal Engine 5, they would have had to rebuild their modding pipelines from scratch. This change could have disrupted the community infrastructure that keeps their past titles commercially viable.

Starfield was released on September 6, 2023, utilizing Creation Engine 2, an updated version of the technology behind Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This upgrade enhanced lighting, procedural generation, and planet-scale environments, while keeping the modding architecture familiar enough for community tools to emerge quickly after launch.

The engine choice is more relevant now due to Starfield’s rocky post-launch journey. The game debuted with a Metacritic score of 88 but has since dropped to a 56% positive rating across 118,315 Steam reviews. This gap shows a clear difference between how critics and long-term players perceive the game. Starfield almost ran on Unreal Engine 5, and it’s hard to say if switching engines would have resolved the issues related to world design and narrative rather than technical execution.

The game also had a bumpy platform history. It launched as an Xbox exclusive and didn’t become available on PS5 until July 2026, nearly two years after the initial release. Currently, Steam concurrency sits around 5,000 players, a fraction of its peak from September 2023.

By The Numbers

Release Date	September 6, 2023
Metacritic Score	88
Steam Review Score	56% positive
Steam Reviews Total	118,315
Current Steam Players	~5,045
Current Steam Price	$39.99

Community feedback on Steam tends to be negative, especially from players who envisioned a more intricately designed open world. One reviewer expressed: “I really wanted a space Skyrim from Bethesda — spaceships instead of dragons, quests, a great story, and all the little details that make Bethesda games special. I tried to play Starfield twice, but…” This comment echoes a common sentiment found in the reviews, highlighting a recurring gap between expectations and reality, rather than any specific technical faults related to the engine choice.

What To Watch

• Whether Bethesda’s Creation Engine 2 commitment will carry on into The Elder Scrolls 6. The modding argument will be even more pressing given Skyrim’s 15-year modding history.
• How Starfield’s mod ecosystem evolves now that the PS5 version is available. Console mod support might be crucial for retaining players after two years of declining numbers.
• Bethesda’s silence on Starfield’s 2.0 roadmap, noted in recent coverage, suggests the studio may have quietly redirected resources to Elder Scrolls 6 development.