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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.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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28 comments
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Liam Dawe Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: LosButchAnyone 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?
It's fully cross-platform between Windows and Linux. It's not available for macOS.
Eike Feb 16, 2021
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It seems there's some crazy reinforcing loops going on nowadays leading to such numbers.
Xpander 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?

Its multiple things really. Survival games that have been recently released, are all been buggy as hell.

Valheim i think took off because: high level of polish, Interesting different setting, covid pandemic, people sit at home and want to play something, Youtubers/Twichers started to praise it right away, Exploration and Discovery aspects that often other survival games kinda lack of and ofc the release timeframe was also spot on, people who got burned with cyberpunk and the likes just wanted to get something to play and there hasnt been much interesting releases lately, so valheim had lucky timing also


Last edited by Xpander on 16 February 2021 at 3:07 pm UTC
detrout 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.

Friend mentioned that they were interested in it because "Call me Kevin" had been streaming it a bunch.


Last edited by detrout on 16 February 2021 at 4:10 pm UTC
ObsidianBlk Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: LosButchAnyone 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?

Just anecdotally... My nephew (Windows) and I (Linux) played some multiplayer recently where he hosted the game and it ran without issues. I haven't played much on any servers or anything, but direct multiplayer seemed fine to me :)
Anza Feb 16, 2021
I'm on the fence actually buying it. I haven't bought it immediately only because I'm trying to finish some other games first.

I have felt bit that on Linux side there's bit of void in survival games, especially ones with also base building. Put 3D on top of that and then it's pretty much ARK (quite buggy) and Rust (which might not be the friendliest multiplayer game). Rest are missing the positive buzz or are lacking in some other ways like they don't have much visual appeal (which is not everything, but still...).
Dmitri Seletski Feb 16, 2021
I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY.
Crap graphics(low polly). Clear alpha quality. Performance is utter crap.(playable, with low polly where you see individual squares on items it is playable, but on my decent rig i get around 60 fps and no, i get more sometimes, so no vsync)
Single player is marginally worse than multiplayer. And multiplayer is plain boring.
No character progression not counting crafting techniques.
Killed first two bosses so far, monster are bland and non exciting. Typical damage sponges. Battle is decent, but absolutely NOTHING to write home about.

Some events happen. Once a few in game days monsters will attack you in your fort. 4-5 monsters will come. Which if you are smart you will disp

Do yourself a favour and buy 7 days to die.
LosButch Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: ObsidianBlk
Quoting: LosButchAnyone 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?

Just anecdotally... My nephew (Windows) and I (Linux) played some multiplayer recently where he hosted the game and it ran without issues. I haven't played much on any servers or anything, but direct multiplayer seemed fine to me :)

Great, thanks. Will probably give it a try when we are done with Divinity 2 then :-)
LosButch Feb 16, 2021
Lol
Quoting: Dmitri SeletskiI have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY.
Crap graphics(low polly). Clear alpha quality. Performance is utter crap.(playable, with low polly where you see individual squares on items it is playable, but on my decent rig i get around 60 fps and no, i get more sometimes, so no vsync)
Single player is marginally worse than multiplayer. And multiplayer is plain boring.
No character progression not counting crafting techniques.
Killed first two bosses so far, monster are bland and non exciting. Typical damage sponges. Battle is decent, but absolutely NOTHING to write home about.

Some events happen. Once a few in game days monsters will attack you in your fort. 4-5 monsters will come. Which if you are smart you will disp

Do yourself a favour and buy 7 days to die.

Have only seen a bit of streaming, but it seems like the low poly thing is part of the design and how its supposed to look. Personally I like the style :-) Looking for a multiplayer coop game that doesent require too much brain power, so this sounds like a good one.
drlamb Feb 16, 2021
Quoting: Dmitri SeletskiI have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY.
Crap graphics(low polly). Clear alpha quality. Performance is utter crap.(playable, with low polly where you see individual squares on items it is playable, but on my decent rig i get around 60 fps and no, i get more sometimes, so no vsync)
Single player is marginally worse than multiplayer. And multiplayer is plain boring.

It sounds like you don't have any friends that play then? I've got 7 on my server and it's been a blast together. Playing with random people doesn't sound fun to me.

Also, I really like the art style. Much better than the hyper realistic approach which ends up looking dated after a few years.

7 days to die is a very ugly game with some newer assets thrown in and performs even worse.

Quoting: Dmitri SeletskiNo character progression not counting crafting techniques.
Killed first two bosses so far, monster are bland and non exciting. Typical damage sponges. Battle is decent, but absolutely NOTHING to write home about.

Some events happen. Once a few in game days monsters will attack you in your fort. 4-5 monsters will come. Which if you are smart you will disp

Do yourself a favour and buy 7 days to die.

LOL, there is player progression. Your skills. They go down by 25% if you die.

This game is leagues more polished and performant than 7 Days to Die, which what, has been in development since 2014? I mean it when I say the state of this game right now puts a lot of other released games (and some EA ones) to shame and 7 Days is on that list.

Try OpenGL if your vulkan performance isn't that great. I can't tell what GPU you have but on AMD currently OpenGL is better.
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