The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
BANGER · RPG · 2011
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $19.99.
- Length
- 35.3h
- Value
- $0.57/hr
- Reviews
- 95% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512 MB of RAM, 6 GB of storage. Windows only.
EPIC FANTASY REBORN The next chapter in the highly anticipated Elder Scrolls saga arrives from the makers of the 2006 and 2008 Games of the Year, Bethesda Game Studios. Skyrim reimagines and revolutionizes the open-world fantasy epic, bringing to life a complete virtual world open for you to explore any way you choose.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
June 2014 is where it bottomed out, at $4.99. It has been discounted 20 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 66 percent off, with about 7 weeks between sales.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 1 percent on value. It is pricier than 90 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 98 percent. Among the games that feel like it, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition (2009) ($14.99, scores 94) beats it on value, while it beats The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition ($39.99, scores 66).
This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 3 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written November 2023 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 83 percent of the 5,139 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 35.3 hours; clearing it takes 240, which is 6.8 times the campaign.
Still 1.5K concurrent players, 15 years in.
The drop-off
89% start to 5% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
1,463 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
A classic Example of "they don't make em like they used to" Genuinely one of the best games of its time.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim scores 93/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/72850/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrimThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 10, price as of Sep 20.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.