It’s only been three weeks since Iron Gate Studio, a team of five people in Sweden, launched Valheim and already has a great success in your hands. The cooperative survival game Viking has sold more than four million copies, although it is still at the beginning of access on Steam.
Valheim takes place in an open world procedurally generated in the Viking afterlife, where you start with almost nothing. You will need to find food and materials and create tools, build shelters and fight against gods and creatures. This may all sound familiar, but it is more than many other survival games – you won’t die if you don’t eat, for example. You don’t have to worry about taking up arms against other players, unless you want to. The co-op feature supports up to 10 players, so you can play with nine of your friends.
With the help of all of this, plus a degree of polish that is lacking in many initial access games and an extremely metallic trailer, Valheim took off in a huge way. Last weekend, it reached a peak player count of over 500,000, an achievement that only four other games have ever achieved on Steam. Even the big hitters like Grand Theft Auto V and Destiny 2 reached the top in the 130,000-150,000 range. Iron Gate says players have spent more than 10,000 years exploring, building and battling their game.
Valheim proved to be popular with Twitch streamers and viewers as well. It peaked at a simultaneous audience of 188,000 earlier this week.
It remains to be seen whether Valheim can sustain that level of interest and momentum in the long run, as Iron Gate continues to work on the game. Although it is only for PC for now, future console and mobile versions would certainly increase interest. At least for now, Valheim it seems untouchable.