A new gaming sensation called Valheim is dominating Steam and the gaming collective as a whole. The viking-themed open world survival game welcomed over 2 million Vikings in under two weeks. Additionally, it’s shattering concurrent player records and is a main attraction on Twitch.
Valheim goes viral on Steam
In a blogpost, developer Iron Gate and publisher Coffee Stain celebrate two million new players on February 15th, doubling it’s player count in under 5 days. In a mere two weeks, the Early Access survival game broke concurrent player records of genre-defining titles like Rust and ARK: Survival Evolved. Those games saw a respective peak player count of 244,000 and 157,000 gamers (both after years of development).
Valheim peaked the interest of over 391,000 players in it’s first few weeks already! As of writing, Valheim is the 4th most played game on Steam, behind PUBG, Dota 2, and Steam-king CS:GO.
Twitch favorite
Besides Steam, Valheim is also dominating other platforms, most notably Twitch. The streaming platform welcomes Valheim in it’s top 10, actually surpassing games like Warzone, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Escape From Tarkov.
Tough sell?
Although Valheim looks fun and all, traditionally a game like that is quite a tough sell for most gamers. It’s relatively low-poly textures, it’s fantasy setting, and of course the fundamental survival genre are things not everyone likes. In fact, you’d think all the Early Access survival-duds would’ve deterred a lot of gamers.
But apparently not, and if you dig a bit deeper, it becomes understandable how Valheim could blow up. Firstly, the low-res textures and accessible graphics means the game can run on most systems. And indeed, with an older i5 (3GHz or higher), 8GB of RAM and a GTX 970 or better, you’ll be running the game buttery smooth. The low price-point also makes it more accessible to the masses.
Lastly, our recent pop-culture obsession with Norse mythology gives Valheim an additional boost. Besides the popular History Channel TV-show, franchises like Assassin’s Creed and God of War tackled Viking lore recently. In other words, if there ever was a time for a Viking-themed survival game to go viral, it’s right now.
Valheim is available through Steam Early Access and costs $19.99 USD (€16,79).
Image credit: IronGate/CoffeeStainPublishing