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13 days after release and it seems there's no stopping the absolute insane rise of the co-op survival game Valheim, as the developer has now announced two million sales. For a game largely developed on Linux that supports Linux fully, this is pretty amazing.

This makes Valheim one of the most successful survival games on Steam, ever. Not only that, it makes it one of the most successful Early Access games ever too. It repeatedly hits new highs on the player count, most recently hitting 392,862 online on February 15.

Valve have certainly taken notice too, as the Steam store page will now greet you with this when you first take a look. This is something not many games get, especially not indie games in Early Access it's often reserved for the big names.

Just how popular is Valheim compared with other survival styled games? Well, it's now comfortably in the actual top five on Steam for player count overall so it's beating the likes of Rust and ARK by a wide margin. Not just current players, the peak player count for Valheim is also far higher than all other survival games apart from Terraria at 489,886 although Terraria only ever hit such a high mark once and has never even come close to 100K since. It's safe to say that Valheim is a viral hit, somehow.

Most other games took a while to build up their numbers but Valheim just exploded and continues to rise. What do you think has caused such a huge influx of players right after release? I don't think we can say for certain but the reasonable price, along with the surprising amount of content probably helps.

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You can buy Valheim with Linux support on Steam. It's an easy recommendation.

Just as a reminder: if you want to hook up with other Linux players, our Discord has a Game Server channel with multiple people hosting already and plenty of regulars from our community joining in on the fun.

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28 comments
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Lolo01 Feb 16, 2021
I had given a few euros last year on Itch to encourage this project running on Linux.
I now bought it on Steam (thanks to user reviews) and find it very nice.

But 7 Days to Die remains my favorite.

Do we know the percentage of games sold on Linux ?
M@GOid Feb 16, 2021
Congrats to the developers for the success. Every indie dreams of hitting big and they did it.

Lets hope the success continue and they make a name for themselves for keeping the game as bug-free and performant as possible.


Last edited by M@GOid on 16 February 2021 at 11:40 am UTC
woox2k Feb 16, 2021
I would also like to know how is this possible?
It's good the game is doing good and it is a good game, but to be on the very top of the charts while still being EA?
woox2k Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: Guestbut what else is new in this price range and genre/style?
That's the thing, since when indie survival games even had a chance to get that popular? Everyone was talking about that the genre is dying partly because at one point almost every indie dev did their own survival game and market was flooded by broken/unfinished alphas. So there certainly are unknown surv games out there in this price range but they have failed to gain popularity for some reason. Valheim just came and took it all in days!


Last edited by woox2k on 16 February 2021 at 1:00 pm UTC
Nanobang Feb 16, 2021
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Y'know? I feel almost an uncle's pride about this --- just because I loved this game way back when it was a little itch in its parents io. Maybe it's because its been a Linux title since the very beginning ... I feel like its "one of ours," and it's gone into the world and "done good."

Sigh. I still have screen shots of the itch version. It was so darn cute.


Last edited by Nanobang on 16 February 2021 at 1:05 pm UTC
woox2k Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: NanobangI feel like its "one of ours," and it's gone into the world and "done good."
Indeed, i also got tens of hours of fun when playing the alpha. Don't get too carried away with this Linux thing though. Pretty much noone will ever know or care that it was partly developed on Linux and had day 0 support. Only Linux people will talk about it, like Arch people advertise their distro of choice.


Last edited by woox2k on 16 February 2021 at 1:17 pm UTC
LosButch Feb 16, 2021
Anyone have experience with multiplayer cross platform? Curious about this game, so how hard is it to host a game with a windows, mac and linix mix?
Brisse Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: woox2kI would also like to know how is this possible?
It's good the game is doing good and it is a good game, but to be on the very top of the charts while still being EA?

I haven't played it, but I've seen that there are a lot of streamers/influensers on social media praising it. I'm sure that has something to do with it's sudden popularity.
Keyrock Feb 16, 2021
I've been having a blast with Valheim. It's a lot more polished than I expected from early access, though I do hope they use some of the money they are generating to improve the stiff animations and to give the UI some love. Runs great otherwise, I haven't encountered a single crash or bug so far.


Last edited by Keyrock on 16 February 2021 at 1:54 pm UTC
Nezchan Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: Brisse
Quoting: woox2kI would also like to know how is this possible?
It's good the game is doing good and it is a good game, but to be on the very top of the charts while still being EA?

I haven't played it, but I've seen that there are a lot of streamers/influensers on social media praising it. I'm sure that has something to do with it's sudden popularity.

I watched some of one popular streamer playing it, and while he was very impressed with how pretty the game is, how well it runs, and many of the early aspects, by a couple of sessions in the bloom was coming off the rose and he started to get more lukewarm about it. All the other stuff was still true, but he was disappointed by small dungeons, lack of enemy variety, and how the procedurally generated terrain was very "same"-y. As in, other than a point of interest being plunked down in an otherwise nondescript (and identical to other chunks of forest), there weren't really dramatic things to break up each type of terrain.

I'm sure the early first session drove a bunch of sales though, since he was praising it a fair bit and has a fan base that trusts his judgment on this stuff (he's pretty analytical about design).
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