Breakout early access sensation Valheim, the Nordic-themed survival title taking the gaming world by storm, has sold more than 5 million copies since it launched on Steam on February 2nd, developer Iron Gate Studio announced on Wednesday. At a retail price of $19.99, that’s roughly $100 million in revenue before accounting for Valve’s cut and other expenses.
The Swedish studio developed the game with a team of just five people and released on Steam’s Early Access platform in February, battling its way to the top five most played games on Steam with more than 500,000 concurrent players at one point last month. (It’s currently sitting at No. 4 on the Steam charts, behind only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.)
The closest analog to Valheim’s success is PUBG, which holds the record of highest concurrent player count on Steam at more than 3.2 million. Like PUBG, which arguably pushed the battle royale genre into the mainstream with its then-unprecedented 100-player take on competitive survival shooters, Valheim is combining the crafting and survival sim mechanics from popular games like Minecraft and Rust and giving them new life.
“Valheim continues to attract critical and player acclaim, with over 115,000 positive user reviews on Steam,” Iron Gate and its publisher, Coffee Stain Publishing, write in a press release. “It has also been climbing the ranks of the 250 top reviewed games of all time on the platform, now sitting at number 39. On Twitch, Valheim has maintained a steady stream of viewers, and fans have now spent more than 35M hours watching Valheim gameplay, and over 16,266 years playing.”
