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Valheim Valheim Valheim, it's all we've been hearing lately. We're guilty of it, other websites and content creators have covered it a lot and so expectedly it's hit new highs again.

Less than one month since entering Early Access, Iron Gate AB and Coffee Stain Publishing have announced they've managed to sell 4 million copies. Not only that, Valheim managed to hit over 500,000 players online at the same time on February 21, which means more people were in game than there were actual Vikings in human history. A more modern detail is that it makes Valheim now on the top 5 of most played games on Steam — ever.

Other fun details include the game being played for "a combined total of 10,000 years" and it continues to climb the Steam Top 250 leaderboard for the best reviewed games of all time and they've hit over 92,000 reviews on Steam.

This is absolute madness. Amazing though, and completely deserved. Fantastic to have such a popular game developed on and for Linux with full support. Iron Gate CEO Richard Svensson has previously made it pretty clear in the official Discord for the game, that they're a "pretty dedicated linux supporter".

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A fresh update for Valheim just recently went out too, here's what's new:

  • Crafting item-dupe bug fix
  • Harpooned player & ship bug fix
  • Fixed player ragdoll
  • Bonemass,Moder,Yagluth difficulty tweaks
  • Moder music updated
  • Tombstone bugfix (probably wont fix disappearing tombstones though)
  • Fixed world corruption caused by pressing ALT+F4 while logging out.
  • Deathsquitos have slightly longer audio range
  • Tweaked audio on blast-furnace & spinning wheel
  • Shared map position setting is saved per world
  • Updated network stats (F2)
  • Building destruction drop-fix
  • Vulkan support in windows builds (Linux is Vulkan by default)
  • Network disconnection bugfix
  • Updated socket-backend

In our previous article we talked about how it caused the popularity of the command-line game hosting tool LinuxGSM to explode too. It's since risen from around 750 servers being hosted to well over 1,400 so it also continues being a very popular way to host games.

With full Linux support you can buy Valheim on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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24 comments
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WorMzy Feb 25, 2021
I wonder if the harpoon fixes are to stop the "space race", e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/ln2fhh/yeeting_vikings/
drlamb Feb 25, 2021
I love this game so much that I've started writing a syslog parser/server watchdog/Discord notifier for the server that I run so I can track player's playtime as well as maintain a list of known players (Game uses SteamID64 internally). The "random events" in the game are logged too but without any sort of discernible location information I'm not sure how much use that is yet.

The watchdog is able to detect a version mismatch and trigger a restart of the systemd unit I wrote which updates the server. I really wish I could "talk" in game from the server side (like Minecraft can) to alert any online players of pending maintenance but for now Discord will have to do.

I'll post it on github once complete if anyone is interested.

----

I posted this yesterday in a comment but adding the following to boot.config within valheim_Data nearly doubled my FPS in some spots. Youtube Video demonstration.

 
gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1



Last edited by drlamb on 25 February 2021 at 4:21 pm UTC
Solarwing Feb 25, 2021
I bought this game on last monday.It feels great although I haven't played it much.According to steam page system requirements for the game are very "friendly" - that's my opinion!And there's no monthly subscription - you only pay once and that's it! It's no wonder that this is so huge success.Great work!
hardpenguin Feb 25, 2021
Quoting: GamingOnLinuxIn our previous article we talked about how it caused the popularity of the command-line game hosting tool LinuxGSM to explode too. It's since risen from around 750 servers being hosted to well over 1,400 so it also continues being a very popular way to host games.
I somehow missed that before! Looks like a very useful project.
Koopacabras Feb 25, 2021
Awesome game, but imho it's clearly more geared towards multiplayer if you plan to do a solo campaign, it's not impossible but it will take a lot of work and time, like three times more work.
Shmerl Feb 25, 2021
Looking forward to GOG release. They should have enough money to pull it off now.
slaapliedje Feb 25, 2021
I have to ask... is this popularity solely based on the game only being 20 bucks? Conan Exiles is pretty similar in scope, yet I'm pretty sure it never got anywhere close to 4 million sales. Especially not so quickly. Granted I think this does some random generation like Minecraft, whereas Conan does not.

I'd wish the developers luck, but clearly they already have it!

Hopefully the fame doesn't go to their head, and they get this into an awesome / epic state for years to come.
Shmerl Feb 25, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeI have to ask... is this popularity solely based on the game only being 20 bucks?

I've played the prototype when it was on itch.io before it was pulled. It's a fun game. I'd say it's a combination of factors. Fun game mechanics, interesting setting and increased interest in gaming in general due to the pandemic. So the game hit the stride.
robvv Feb 25, 2021
Quoting: WorMzyI wonder if the harpoon fixes are to stop the "space race", e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/ln2fhh/yeeting_vikings/

Reminds me of something you would see in Goat Simulator, which Coffee Stain also published :-)
drlamb Feb 25, 2021
Quoting: robvvReminds me of something you would see in Goat Simulator, which Coffee Stain also published :-)

Not to be pedantic but Coffee Stain developed Goat Simulator.

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I've seen so many people praising Coffee Stain for Valheim and I'm happy to see there's usually someone in the comments correcting them. Iron Gate deserves to be known for their work.
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