While Starfield may not have had the best of outings at The Game Awards, Bethesda Game Studios is working tirelessly on quality-of-life improvements as well as new content for the space exploration ARPG. From 2024, Bethesda plans to update Starfield every six weeks as well as address several performance issues in the safest ways possible.
The revelation was made by a studio representative after the December 11 Starfield Update 1.8.88 Notes was shared on Reddit. The Monday update addressed “player pet asteroids, an issue with outposts, and a crash impacting some Xbox and Microsoft Store players”. See the details of all the fixes below.
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Starfield Update 1.8.88 Fixes and Improvements
Gameplay: Addressed an issue that would cause space matter to become stuck to player’s ship during space travel. Loading a save will now remove the space clingon. Please note: This fix should address any space matter being stuck in your travels, but not in instances where player ships have New Atlantis attached. A fix for that will be released in a later update.
Outpost: Fixed an issue that prevents random guns from spawning in a newly created Weapon Case after loading a save.
Save/Load: [MSS/Xbox] Fixed an issue where players could experience crashes while saving during long playthrough without going through the Unity.
It is important to mention that Update 1.8.88 is the same as the one that arrived with the Beta Patch on PC on December 1. Therefore, if you participated in the beta, you don’t have to worry about downloading the new update. For those who didn’t participate in the beta, the update should boot up the next time you are in Starfield.
Interestingly, some Starfield players have complained that the update was ineffective and that the problems described as resolved persisted even after they installed the update.
“My three pet rocks are still following me,” wrote @FerrousLion. “And the game still crashes frequently on console. Nothing was fixed.”
Another player @IDCUEverywhere corroborated the information that the crashes persisted in a comment, “’Crashes that could occur when saving during long playthroughs’. Nothing fixed on consoles!!!”
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Starfield appears to be froth with several bugs, staying true to what has become the norm for previous Bethesda releases. Under the comment section of the post on X, several players pointed out issues they have encountered with the game.
Starfield will get updates every 6 weeks
Under the Starfield subreddit, a Bethesda representative published a statement to the community highlighting what appears to be the roadmap for the game in the coming months. Although big updates will come every six weeks or so, if there is anything that needs to be fixed, Bethesda will release a small update to fix it in between the six-week interval.
“We’ve been hard at work on many of the issues you’ve posted, and expect an update early next year that will include a large number of ‘in-progress’ quest fixes as well as FSR3 and XeSS,” the representative said. “Though we fixed several quest issues from occurring, in-progress quest fixes are much harder to fix and we’ve built a new system to correct those without you having to roll back your save.”
“We’re also hard at work on many of new features you asked for, from city maps, to mod support, to all new ways of traveling (stay tuned!). These will be rolling out with a regular cadence of fixes and updates we expect to have roughly every six weeks. If something can be done in a smaller hotfix in between (like the asteroid), and we feel it’s safe, we’ll get one of those out as well. Safe is the key here. We do take a lot of time to test even the smallest change in a game this large and dynamic.”
Bethesda also invites players to keep posting about any item they want more info on or issues that they have encountered in the game. They promised to continue fixing any issue that came to their attention. Do you think Starfield deserved more at The Game Awards? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
