Valheim went live on Steam exactly five weeks ago and has been on fire ever since. Iron Gate’s Viking survival simulator skyrocketed to the charts, reaching 5 million copies sold after just a month on Early Access and surpassing huge titles like Dota 2 in terms of competing active players.
Steam reviews for Valheim exude a palpable sense of admiration and relief. Players regularly compare the feeling with the first time they played Minecraft, marveling at the scope, depth and atmosphere of the game, and questioning how a team of just five developers managed to put together such an engaging experience in a 1 GB download. Valheim release players into an original realm of Viking purgatory, a vast procedural world filled with mythical Nordic beasts, the high seas, hunting and crafts. It is dense, but forgiving; full of action, but peaceful.
To date, Iron Gate has sold more than 5.7 million copies of Valheim. There are still only five people on the development team.
“We are doing our best,” Iron Gate co-founder Henrik Tornqvist told Engadget. “It has been very busy around here since the launch.”
Iron gate
Tornqvist and studio co-founder Richard Svensson are looking to hire a few more people, including a QA manager to handle the influx of bug reports from millions of new beta testers. Otherwise, you are getting support from Coffee Stain Publishing – the staff responsible for Goat Simulator, a real grandfather of viral video games.
Svensson started working on Valheim in 2017, as a lateral movement. During the day, he and Tornqvist were colleagues at the Swedish studio Pieces Interactive, but by early 2018, Svensson had stopped focusing entirely on Valheim.
“At the end of 2018 I also left to join forces with him,” said Tornqvist. “We founded the Iron Gate company in April 2019 and, at that time, we already knew what we wanted to get to Valheim. “