Valheim Creators Break Their Silence On The Game's Success

Valheim was the hit game no one was expecting: an open world survival adventure set in a mystical world with Vikings. Critics responded positively to Valheim's Steam Early Access state, and the game already boasts over three million players, yet the creators of this massively popular game have been relatively silent until now.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Henrik Törnqvist, co-founder of developer Iron Gate Studio, spoke about the sudden success of Valheim. Törnqvist said, "We had a feeling that it would sell pretty well, at least to sustain us, you know. But it being a million seller, and now two million seller, is something we could never have guessed." Törnqvist called the experience "humbling."

Sebastian Eriksson from Coffee Stain Publishing, the publisher of Valheim, also expressed his shock at how well the game is doing on Steam. He echoed Törnqvist's statement, saying, "We were also fairly optimistic, or I would say very optimistic, in terms of how the game would perform. But this is above and beyond all of our wildest imaginations." Eriksson added, "we internally discussed that if someone had suggested we would sell two million copies within two weeks, we would have just laughed at that person and said, yeah, okay, you're apparently just trolling." The excitement from Coffee Stain Publishing and Iron Gate Studio was palpable in the interview, and both teams expressed their gratitude to all of the gamers who have fallen in love with Valheim.

Eriksson added that he's recently enjoyed looking through Reddit forums to see all of the creative content fans have posted since Valheim's release. He said, "I really want to thank all of the people who are posting ... It's so much fun."

Valheim recently broke records for the most concurrent Steam players earlier this year, and the team behind the game seems confident that fans will continue playing Valheim in droves. Törnqvist explained that Iron Gate Studio now needs to hire additional staff to handle the huge influx of players. Though many game studios have proven that awesome games can be built by small teams, the online component of Valheim requires more rigorous maintenance that games solely played offline. More support for the game can only be a good thing, hopefully making the overall experience of playing Valheim even smoother.

While PC gamers are enjoying Valheim, Iron Gate Studio hasn't made any definitive announcements about its potential release on PS5 or Xbox consoles. For right now, the team has to try and keep up with the game's massive popularity, and that's work enough.