Bethesda trademark points to future Starfield expansion, fans believe

Starfield fans believe a trademark for "Starborn" registered by Bethesda parent company Zenimax earlier this month points to the game's currently unrevealed second expansion, likely due in 2025.

Bethesda's space RPG released last year, and is set to launch its first expansion Shattered Space in the coming months. In conversation with YouTuber MrMattyPlays back in June, Bethesda's Todd Howard confirmed there would be at least one more expansion to come after Shattered Space, stating the studio was already "planning for the one after this".

It now appears that this 'planning' has made further progress, thanks to that aforementioned trademark. As spotted by Timur222 on social media platform X, Bethesda has filed a trademark for something known as Starborn. What is a Starborn? We'll explain below - so beware of small Starfield spoilers.

Starfield: Shattered Space - Official Trailer - Xbox Games Showcase 2024

A mysterious group known as Starborn feature in the base game. They have passed through a portal known as the Unity and travelled between universes. Starborn only reveal themselves to the heroic Constellation group after enough of the game's Artefacts have been collected.

Purely speculatively for now, this trademark suggests that Starfield's next DLC after Shattered Space could focus on this group, perhaps expanding on the group's origins and their abilities to visit different universes.

We shall have to wait and see.

As for more imminent DLC, we got our first proper look at Starfield's Shattered Space expansion earlier this year, when Bethesda released a space-horror flavoured trailer during Xbox's summer showcase. You can check it out in the video above.

Shattered Space will offer a fresh mystery involving the snake-loving House Va'ruun, at some point later in 2024.