Valheim 1.0's Steam player count soars to a huge 5-year high, but it's not enough to beat the viral survival game's early access peak
The five-year wait for Valheim 1.0 doesn't seem to have hurt the survival game behemoth's popularity all that much.
The five-year wait for Valheim 1.0 doesn't seem to have hurt the survival game behemoth's popularity all that much.
The short version
- After leaving early access, the crafty viking sim is enjoying a huge resurgence in Steam player numbers.
- Valheim's early access tenure ended earlier today, and it seems like lots of people were waiting for exactly the right time to jump into (or jump back into) the viral hit's adorably polygonal world.
- At the time of writing, around 160,000 folks are simultaneously playing Valheim's Steam version - the game hasn't reached such a huge crowd since April 2021. (Thanks, SteamDB .) Still, Valheim hasn't been able to capture lightning in a bottle twice.
What happened
The game peaked over five years ago when 502,387 people logged on at the same time, aided by memes that sailed across the web and a playerbase that wasn't totally pandemic-free yet. Today's Steam stats may also be skewed by the fact that Iron Gate's breakout game is now available to play on PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.
Why it matters
The Valheim crowd on Steam no longer represents the entire Valheim crowd, then.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Eurogamer via the links above and below.