Bethesda has once again failed to send out review copies of Starfield, with the PS5 version coming under fire from fans unhappy with its performance.

As you might have guessed, we were not sent review copies of Starfield on PlayStation 5, when it launched on Tuesday last week. Bethesda – which has never been keen on enabling reviews at the best of times – refused to send out copies of the Xbox and PC versions to certain UK outlets, including Eurogamer and The Guardian, when the game first came out in 2023.

Judging by the lack of reviews on Metacritic at the moment, we weren’t the only ones they left out this time either and, as ever, it’s easy to guess why, especially given Bethesda’s poor track record when it comes to bugs and glitches.

The original versions of Starfield were actually quite good in that respect, with generally decent performance, but fans have found that the PlayStation 5 version is considerably worse, with serious problems with bugs and crashes.

Fans have congregated in a Reddit thread entitled ‘Base PS5 crashing getting out of hand, it’s unplayable’, where the original post from ShogunRaw claims that, ‘I’m getting crashes every two minutes. Tried everything. Delete saves. Tried performance 30 and 60 fps. Delete the game and redownload it. And it’s still happening.’

‘This is not acceptable. They should refund us!’, they add, which seems to be a common sentiment amongst other players.

‘PS5 Pro user. Visuals Mode 60fps. All autosaves off. Tested on vanilla [PlayStation 5] and light LO [sic] nothing of which touches weather, environments or points of interest,’ writes colinrabb.

‘Consistent crashing. Mostly when scanning and exploring. I haven’t even left Kreet yet. When I say crashing it’s more a freeze. It’s not crashing to home screen. The game freezes and forces you to quit game. Hotfix needed ASAP. Incredibly disappointing but sadly totally unsurprising.’

‘Mine crashes straight to dashboard. I’ve turned off all I’ve read to turn off. I’ve started a new save. Don’t it all [sic]. Currently unplayable. Which really sucks,’ says Alpha_Omega_Grave in reply.

The term ‘unplayable’ comes up a lot, with Left_Worldliness6174 claiming that, ‘Playing on PS5 Pro, constant freezing and crashing while building ship. Also, while scanning planets. Since launch had over 20 freezes and crashes. Unplayable.’

‘I must stress, I own multiple PlayStation 4/5 games and have never ever experienced crashes or freezes at all on either of my PlayStation 5 consoles,’ writes Jumpy-Web6641. ‘I agree that this is definitely a bug or optimisation issue. I appreciate this is a big game, but not good practice in my opinion.’

‘I suggest you submit a ticket via Bethesda support,’ they add helpfully.

One reason why the PlayStation 5 version might be faring worse than the originals is that it launched alongside significant new DLC for the game, which combined with the new version may have created a patchwork of unanticipated problems.

The counter to all this is that the PlayStation Store currently has the game on a 4.29/5 score. Although we’ve failed to find any game that has a particularly low score, with even the abominable Code Violet sitting on an above average 2.84.

Whether that means the problems aren’t as widespread as Reddit makes it seem, or PlayStation Store patrons are just naturally generous with their reviews, isn’t clear.

Another point is that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered suffered from similar complaints and while it wasn’t as bad as Starfield seems to be on PlayStation 5, the game still went on to sell millions, with little acknowledgement from Bethesda that there was ever a problem.

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