Starfield on PS5 'unplayable' players complain plagued by glitches and crashes

Key art for Bethesda's Starfield with astronauts — Artemis II has a much more successful launch (Bethesda)

Bethesda has once again failed to send review copies of Starfieldwith PS5 the version that is criticized by fans unhappy with his performance.

As you may have guessed, we were not sent review copies of Starfield on the PlayStation 5 when it launched on Tuesday of last week. Bethesda – which has never been keen on enabling reviews in the best of times – refused to send copies of Xbox and PC versions at several 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 always, 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 this regard, with generally good performance, but fans have discovered that the PlayStation 5 version is significantly worse, with serious glitches and crashes.

Fans have gathered in one Reddit thread titled ‘PS5 base is crashing out of control, unplayable’, where the original post from ShogunRaw claims that, ‘I’m crashing every two minutes. Tried everything. Delete the savings. Proven 30 and 60 fps performance. Delete the game and download it again. And it’s still happening.’

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

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‘PS5 Pro user. 60 fps visual mode. All automatic courses are turned off. Tested on vanilla (PlayStation 5) and light LO (sic) none of which affect WEATHERenvironments or points of interest”, writes colinrabb.

‘Continuous collision. Mainly when scanning and exploring. I haven’t left Crete yet. When I say crash it’s more of a freeze. It’s not crashing on the home screen. The game freezes and forces you to quit the game. A quick fix is required as soon as possible. Extremely disappointing, but sadly completely unsurprising.’

‘Mine crashes right into the dashboard. I turned off everything I read to turn off. I started a new savings. Don’t do all (sic). Currently unplayable. Which is really disgusting,” Alpha_Omega_Grave says in response.

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 the planets. Since launch there have been over 20 freezes and crashes. Immovable.’

“I have to point out, I own a lot of PlayStation 4/5 games and have never experienced crashes or freezes on any of my PlayStation 5 consoles,” Jumpy-Web6641 wrote. “I agree that this is definitely an issue or an optimization problem. I appreciate that this is a great game, but not good practice for me opinion.’

“I suggest you submit a ticket through Bethesda support”, they helpfully add.

One reason why the PlayStation 5 version may be worse than the original is that it was launched alongside important new DLC for the game, which combined with the new version may have created a number of unforeseen problems.

The objection to all this is that PlayStation Store currently has the game with a score of 4.29/5. Although we have not been able to find any game that has a particularly low, even disgusting, score Code Violet sitting above the average 2.84.

It’s not clear if this means the problems aren’t as widespread as Reddit makes it out to be, or if PlayStation Store customers are just being generous with their feedback.

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