It’s only been three weeks since Iron Gate Studio, a five-person team in Sweden, was released Valheim and it already has a massive hit on its hands. The cooperative Viking survival game has sold more than four million copies, although it is still available on Steam early on.
Valheim takes place in a procedure-generated open world in the Viking afterlife, where you start with almost nothing. You must clean up food and materials, and you must make tools, build shelters, and fight gods and creatures. This may sound familiar, but it’s a lot of other survival games – you will not die if you do not eat, for example. You do not have to worry about tackling weapons against other players unless you also want to. The collaboration feature supports up to ten players, so you can play with nine of your friends.
With the help of all this, plus some polish missing from very early access games and an extremely metal trailer, Valheim rose in a big way. Last weekend, it was more than 500,000 players, an achievement that only four other games have achieved on Steam. Even big hits like Grand Theft Auto V and Destiny 2 ended in the range of 130,000-150,000. Iron Gate says players have been watching, building and fighting their game for over 10,000 years.
Valheim is also popular with Twitch streamers and viewers. It peaked at 188,000 earlier this week.
It remains to be seen whether Valheim can maintain this interest and momentum in the long run while Iron Gate is still working on the game. Although it is currently only PC, future console and mobile versions will surely increase the interest. At least for now, Valheim seems inviolable.