There are over twice as many people working on Starfield than Fallout 76, according to Nate Purkeypile, founder of Just Purkey Games and ex-Bethesda dev, who was recently interviewed by PCGamesN and gave insight as to how big the team behind Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG might really be. There are supposedly “500 people or something” working on Starfield, a number that dwarfs the amount of developers who worked on Fallout 76. That team was “maybe 200, tops,” according to Purkeypile.
“The scope of that project is the main thing that’s different, because, you know, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, that was all one team,” Purkeypile began. “Fallout 76, that was two mostly, we had a little bit of help from Montreal, but it was mostly the Austin and Maryland [Bethesda] studios working together.”
“But yeah, Starfield is a much bigger project, it’s like 500 people or something on the team, whereas I think [Fallout] 76 was maybe 200, tops,” Purkeypile went on to reveal, pointing out one of the reasons as to why he left Bethesda to make games on his own.
From a PCGamesN report:
[…] Nate Purkeypile [is the] founder of Just Purkey Games and a developer for 17 years, 14 of which were spent at Bethesda from Fallout 3 all the way to Starfield, as an artist on many projects. Naturally, Purkeypile wasn’t able to go too in depth about Starfield, due to contracts and the fact it isn’t out until next year, but he gave us some interesting tidbits about the space project.
When it comes to the size of Starfield, Purkeypile says it isn’t just the biggest game Bethesda has ever made, but also the one that has required the biggest team as well.
Purkeypile also said that the biggest challenge faced during Starfield’s development while he was there – keep in mind a lot about the game could have changed since he left – was the effort and detail needed to be put in to make an entirely new fictional universe.
Starfield arrives exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2023, and Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be able to play it on day one. Players will be transported to the year 2330, during which humanity has ventured beyond the solar system, settling new planets and living as a spacefaring people.