For the poll, I think Starfield will break CP2077's record on Steam of 1,054,388 concurrent players. That's the highest in Steam's history for a single-player game.
PUBG was absolutely stupid and I don't think anyone is going to catch its peak of 3,257,248 concurrent players. And that was almost 6 years ago. Steam has grown an insane amount since Fallout 4, quadrupled in size IIRC, and many in the PC community have been aching for a new mainline Bethesda game. Skyrim and Fallout 4 are still wildly played on Steam to this day and I have no doubt Starfield is going to be making a record setting splash on the platform.
I just saw the bonus questions lol
1) No, it will not peak in early access
2) I think it'll pull at least 500K peak concurrent players during its early access period and go upwards of 1.2 million peak concurrent players when it launches.
You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind