Valheim is almost the biggest survival game ever on Steam, and it’s not even two weeks old. On February 14, Valheim reached a peak of 367,443 players on Steam, barely two weeks after the February 2 release. Compared to the most popular survival games on Steam, this makes it the fastest growing game in the genre ever. Its rival competitors, Rust and ARK: Survival Evolve, have not been able to boast such a large number of streams throughout their lives and only reached comparable peaks years after its launch.
The only obstacle for Valheim to claim the crown of ‘the most concurrent players of a survival game ever’ is the all-time highlight held by Terraria, which reached 489,886 players in May 2020. It should be noted that this was a brief and unusual increase caused by the announcement and launch of Terraria’s final update ever. On a normal day, Terraria draws around 30-50,000 players, with its highest peak on June 29, 2015, with 159,171 players. As such, Valheim has been larger than Terraria almost all its life. For a better comparison, check out the two survival games that stay close to the top of the Steam playlist; Rust and ARK. Despite early access in 2014, Rust hit just over 100,000 concurrent players in March 2020. ARK had a much faster track; after being launched in June 2105, it hit more than 100,000 concurrent players in January 2017. ARK’s peak of all time is 157,400, which he achieved in March 2020. Rust, meanwhile, reached its all-time high of 245,243 in January 2021.
That puts Valheim’s growth far ahead of its genre competition, and it’s more in line with the viral explosion of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. But even PUBG, launched in March 2017, took three months to reach more than Valheim’s current peak of concurrent players, with an increase of 382,779 concurrently back on July 10, 2017.This means that the only truly comparable games, numerically speaking, are the major AAA titles. But these games tend to peak immediately during launch and then decline rapidly. The curve of Cyberpunk 2077 is indeed the complete reverse of Valheim’s. The RPG started with an everyday high of more than a million players, but within two weeks had fewer players than Valheim currently has.
Because of AAA, Valheim cannot claim that it is the fastest growing game on Steam ever. But this is definitely one of, if not, the biggest indie success story on the platform. It is especially remarkable how close it all comes; While Among Us reached an all-time high of 447,476, it took a year before the game caught on, and he spent much of his life with barely a few hundred players. Among us, too, was fueled by stream culture, something that has not yet been a significant part of Valheim’s success. As far as we can see, there is no other survival game on Steam that has had such a remarkable launch.
For more information on this great success for early access, check out our essential tips for playing Valheim.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s British news and entertainment writer.
