Over 50,000 Vikings are still playing Valheim on Steam after a year – what makes it so good?

In February 2021, Valheim was the surprise hit on Steam and has attracted millions of players in a very short time. Now, a year later, the game still has tens of thousands of fans. MeinMMO takes a look at what has happened up to the birthday and why the game inspires so many gamers.

This is how it is with Valheim right now: Although Valheim appeared in Early Access on February 2nd, 2021 as an unfinished indie game, it’s still popular to this day. In January 2022 played loud steamcharts over 55,600 players simultaneously Valheim. Some key data about the game:

• to release Valheim was able to attract over 498,000 players at the same time
• at its lowest point, the game still had 29,700 concurrent players in August 2021
• with the release of Hearth & Home, the first major update, it was 109,700 players again just a month later

The game never had fewer than 17,000 players on average, which is a massive number for a small indie project. The success even took the developers by surprise, who decided without further ado to simply give away a horse.

Why are so many excited about Valheim? While Valheim is a challenging survival game at its core, it’s also less punishing. You must eat, but you cannot starve. Better equipment makes everything easier, but it’s only really necessary when it’s cold.

The game offers a lot of freedom and approaches to play. You can explore the world alone or defeat the game’s tough bosses with friends. Build an entire city as a clan or erect huge structures alone – or plan enormous projects like the Stormwind Harbor.

The construction system in particular inspires the majority of players in the long run. They share their creations. The developers even held a competition to reward just such master builders.

Valheim offers a similar amount of creative freedom as Minecraft, but combines it with a story and does without the childish charm. It doesn’t require a powerful computer and can even be played natively on Linux. The result is 95% positive reviews on Steam.

Consistently strong ratings, sporadic new content

Here’s how Valheim evolved: Since the release in February 2021, errors in particular have been corrected. The developers said from the start that they wanted to do everything “right” before new content came out on a large scale. Nevertheless, there were some new features:

• some balance patches and graphics updates for bosses
• a rubbish bin that is surprisingly well received
• finally Hearth & Home, the long-awaited first update with new building and cooking recipes and an overhauled combat system

At least the core fans don’t seem to mind that the developers need longer. Some clever Vikings have provided new content themselves through mods. Others want to make Valheim a true 1000 player MMO.

Is it worth taking a look at the game? Even without mods, Valheim is still fun to play as the player count alone shows. If you’re into co-op play and have a few friends on hand, give Valheim a try – especially if you’re a creative mind with a knack for building systems.

But action is not neglected either. If you like fighting, Valheim currently offers you 5 bosses with the prospect of more and countless other opponents in a huge world. We even recommend Valheim at MeinMMO as one of the best games for getting started in survival games.

Anyone who joins now also has a good chance of seeing new content in the near future. Immediately after the release there was a roadmap with plans, the first of which were implemented and others are likely to be almost ready.

New content is almost ready

In a Message from the developer for the birthday, the topic came up, among other things, about upcoming content. There it says that the “final touches” are currently being planned for the new mountain update.

This should add caves and dungeons to the already existing mountains biome, where wolves and other creatures live. It is not yet known when exactly the update will come – but we expect it by the beginning of summer at the latest.

There is also a first look at the new opponents from the planned Mistland biome. The Mistlands are the first new biome to be introduced in Valheim. At first glance, it looks like an enchanted forest of spiders, in which apparently strange moths can also be found:

Here you can find pictures of the new biomes

Data for the updates are still pending. Since Valheim is still the project of a small team that has only recently been able to grow, at least the content that is now coming up will probably take a little longer. After all, game development takes years, even at large studios.

Hopefully it will go faster afterwards when the team has reached the appropriate size. However, the developers have already indicated that Valheim will eventually be “over”. We are eagerly awaiting when that will be the case.

For that long, 2022 already offers some other exciting survival titles that will hopefully satisfy the hunger for more:

7 new survival games to look forward to in 2022