It's now a little more than four years since Valheim entered Early Access, and in a new interview during Gamescom last week, Robin Eyre, the game's Creative Lead, reflected on its success. When the early version of the game launched in 2021, the team had modest expectations, hoping to sell around 20,000 copies. But as most players know by now, that's not how things turned out. Instead, the Swedish Viking survival game exploded in popularity, selling one million copies per week for two months straight.
It was a scenario that Iron Gate was completely unprepared for. As a result, one developer had to spend five months on their own, fixing bugs just to keep the game stable. Eyre explained:
"First thing we had to do was make sure that everyone could play the game. So for five months, there was one programmer fixing bugs."
The game remains in Early Access to this day, but beyond Steam it has also made its way onto Xbox. Following the recent Call to Arms update, the studio now has its eyes on the final planned biome, Deep North, which will be released alongside the game's 1.0 launch.
Do you still play Valheim, and are you looking forward to Deep North?