Valheim is Steam’s most popular new PC game, and it has now sold 3 million copies

The other day I saw a game named Valheim at the top of the Steam Early Access sales charts, with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Polygon seemed to like the $ 20 Viking themed survival game, and I thought friends might like it too. I wasn’t ready to commit yet – hesitated for a moment before giving it a shot. Do you know who bought it while I was making up my mind? A million other people.

On February 10, just eight days after launch, indie developer Iron Gate announced that Valheim had already sold 1 million copies. Five days after that, Valheim reached 2 million sales. On Friday February 19, two days after this article was originally published, it hit 3 million sales.

Here are a few more facts you might like to know:

• It is now the second most played game on all from Steam at some point, before each game save Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and he’s comfortably seated at number three now.
• He has already set a record in the top ten for simultaneous players on Steam with around 392,000 on Monday, hitting Grand Theft Auto V of this top 10.
• On Friday he took 9th place with 410,000 players, shooting Postal down a rung.
• It topped Steam’s best sellers list during Valve’s Steam Lunar New Year sale – despite not having a discount.

As PC player points out, ValheimThe trajectory of is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Perhaps the closest parallel is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – which also came out of Steam Early Access, sold tons of copies in Steam sales (also without being on sale), set a record for the Steam game with the most simultaneous players (3.2 million) that exists even today, and launched the whole kind of battle royale that spawned today Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, and more. But even PUBG it took months to reach the kind of numbers that Valheim has done it before, and it was with a game that defines the genre, action-packed, nail-biting and streamer-friendly that makes for a delightfully taut watch.

Valheim, by comparison, is slow and methodical. It’s part of an established genre of survival games where you scavenge and harvest, chop and dig, hunt and skin, then build better tools to do it more efficiently over and over again. Only here you are also a badass viking who can (possibly) build fortresses and ships, you seek gods for sport and you explore an incredibly gigantic map filled with idyllic landscapes, lovely music, a touch of lived-in mystery, and enemies that trample over me convincingly enough that I get a slight Dark souls vibe out of it. Oh, and when you chop down trees they fall and hit other things (like you) for massive damage! It will never get old.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Like Cass Marshall at Polygon points out, it’s also incredibly accessible and easy to learn – I convinced myself that I didn’t like survival games due to their generally rigid mechanics, but in Valheim everything seems to make sense without thinking too much. I don’t need to spend centuries boring trees to build basic tools, you don’t need to acquire blueprints (recipes unlock as soon as you find new materials), and I don’t don’t have to plan carefully how I want my house to look before I start building. You can instantly demolish part of a structure and refund your materials if it’s not quite right.

In fact, the build is fast enough that I start building temporary forward operating bases before venturing into each new area, like the little fort below which took every five minutes and have since expanded. twice.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It’s unclear how long the magic will last for me or the game’s 2 million players and that matters, of course. It’s all been downhill since Among us on PC, which currently only draws a tenth of its peak player count of 438,000 last September (although it may still be very popular on mobile).

But I imagine word of mouth can continue Valheim go for a while. I can’t wait to try out the game’s two to ten player co-op mode with my circle of friends, and it means more of the wild.

Yes Valheim has resistance, expect to hear the name of this game on many lips in the coming months. If history is any indication, we’ll soon see a rush of knockoffs, knockoffs, and attempts to play other games more like it, and there could be a lot of pressure on Iron Gate to port the PC-only game to. consoles. and phones too.

Update, February 19: Valheim has now sold 3 million copies and now has a new record for the ninth most simultaneous player anytime on Steam.