It appears that Starfield will not release with Russian language support after Bethesda removed the language in a recent Steam update. Starfield is easily one of the most anticipated RPGs of 2023 with millions of players looking forward to its September release and will support several languages such as German, French, Italian, and Japanese, some of which are to enjoy full audio support while others are only supported through subtitles and a translated interface.Starfield will be the first game from Bethesda Game Studios since Fallout 76 released in 2018; that is, if one doesn't count The Elder Scrolls: Blades which released for mobile platforms the following year. The studio is perhaps best known in recent years for developing Skyrim, a game that still enjoys massive popularity 12 years after it launched and has also received several re-releases that added things like VR support and extra content. With today's news, it's not only Sony feeling left out with Starfield.While most of the games from Bethesda Game Studios have enjoyed Russian language support in recent years, Starfield files related to the language were removed in a recent update as evidenced by SteamDB. While the instinctive assumption would be that Bethesda is silently showing its support for Ukraine in the country's ongoing conflict with Russia, it is unknown at this time why Bethesda has chosen to drop Russian language support. It must also be noted that there are several other Russophone countries that form part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region such as Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Other countries that do not form part of the CIS also have significant Russian-speaking populations, for example Latvia and Estonia.
The removal of Russian language support from Starfield has sparked several discussions on the Steam community for the game with some players dismayed that they will not be able to enjoy the game in the widely-spoken language. Several respondents are questioning whether the removal is politically motivated. Russian has also been removed from the list of officially supported languages on the Steam store page. Starfield was reportedly fully playable at the end of January 2023 already, so one can only wonder how far along the Russian translation was and why Bethesda has decided to drop support for the language.
Bethesda will hopefully provide some clarity on its decision to remove Russian language support before the upcoming Starfield showcase in June. Failing to do so could potentially lead to the Russian-speaking fan base to draw its own conclusions and affect their support for Bethesda in the future.
Starfield launches September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: PCGamesN