Starfield player steals an entire pirate space station, then lands it on a planet: 'They let me buy their base'

Starfield
(Image credit: u/VeganSatan666420 on Reddit)

What you need to know

  • A Starfield player has somehow managed to buy and register The Key as one of their spaceships.
  • The Key, a large space station, is the headquarters of the Crimson Fleet pirate faction.
  • The player even managed to move around the station's modules in the Ship Builder and land it on a planet.
  • Following the emergence of this bug, many are hopeful that Starfield will get buildable space stations in DLC or mods.

While Starfield allows — and strongly encourages — you to buy new ships to use for space battles or cargo hauling, there currently isn't a way to purchase or build one of the space stations you can often find in orbit around planets. Thanks to a bizarre glitch, though, one player has somehow managed to take ownership of The Key, the station that Crimson Fleet pirates use as their headquarters.

"[I'm] still not really sure," wrote u/VeganSatan666420 (that is quite the username), the aforementioned player, when asked how they managed to do this on Reddit. "I sold a stolen ship to the pirates, then went to change home ship and it let me register The Key."

Interestingly, the station was visible in the Ship Builder menu once it was purchased, and its various modules could even be moved around like a ship's can. This has led many fans to believe that we might see the ability to build and customize your own stations come to Starfield as DLC or a mod at some point.

"This bug might hint at a feature for a future DLC, which would be cool to have your own orbital space station," said u/vRedDeathv on the subject. "I would love to have a shipyard in the game tbh." 

u/VeganSatan666420 says that The Key is "not really flyable," but remarkably, they did manage to land the station on a planet as if it were a ship. Based on the screenshots provided, it looks like it awkwardly clipped into the ground when this happened, though it appears to have been physically intact and may have even been boardable from the planet's surface.

Whatever you do, it seems imperative that you don't try to sell space stations like The Key if you somehow manage to get one. Doing so may remove the location from the game entirely, preventing you from accessing any of the services, characters, and quests onboard.

"Do not sell it," warned u/DeliriousDal, another player that got their hands on The Den station. "Sold The Den thinking that would somehow fix the bug, and The Den is now gone."

Starfield is finally here, and it's undoubtedly one of the best Xbox games and best PC games for lovers of space exploration, deep RPG gameplay, and the sci-fi genre as a whole.

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Brendan Lowry

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. He's been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you'll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he's not writing or gaming, there's a good chance he's either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once. Follow him on X (Twitter).