Star Trek Online players hold in-game vigils for Patrick Stewart
Galaxy-class starships gathered in Earth orbit while torch-bearing crowds filled Earth Spacedock, with seven instances full or close to capacity.
Star Trek Online players have been holding public memorials inside the MMO for Patrick Stewart, who died at 86 this week. The announcement of his death described a brief illness involving Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia. On October 30, 2026, PC Gamer found player fleets in Earth orbit and torchlight vigils at Earth Spacedock and Starfleet Academy.
Fleets, torches and a stand-in captain
Stewart played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and players honoured him in the most Trek way possible. A flotilla of player-captained Galaxy-class cruisers, the same class as Picard's Enterprise-D, gathered in Earth orbit under names such as USS Remembrance and USS ForEverPicard.
Aboard Earth Spacedock, the Federation hub, groups circled the Starfleet seal holding torches, an emote the game offers for honouring absent friends. PC Gamer counted seven Spacedock instances that were full or close to capacity. Planetside at Starfleet Academy, one player whose character was named and styled as Picard stood silently while others saluted, quoted the captain or recited Shakespeare, a nod to Stewart's stage career.
A small MMO with a long memory
Star Trek Online launched in 2010 and is still running 16 years later as a free-to-play game from Cryptic Studios and Arc Games. It is far from the top of the charts: PC Gamer put the Steam concurrent count at around 1,500 players while the vigils were running, which means the hundreds attending made up a large share of the people online. The community held a similar gathering earlier in the same week for Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original series.
On Steam, the game holds a Mostly Positive rating of 79% from more than 21,000 user reviews.
For players in SEA
Star Trek Online is free to play on PC through Steam, so anyone who wants to pay their respects can download it and join in. New characters have to clear the opening tutorial before they can travel to Earth Spacedock; it took PC Gamer's writer about an hour.
Where to find the gatherings
The vigils PC Gamer joined were spread across three spots: Earth orbit in the Sol system, the Earth Spacedock hub, and the Starfleet Academy grounds on Earth. All of them were player-organised rather than official events.
Source: PC Gamer; Star Trek Online on Steam.
