Previously, the indie survival game Valheim wowed us all when it sold over a million copies in a single week. Following that success, the game managed to take its heights to a whole new level.
Steam records the number of concurrent users for all of its multiplayer titles. And over the weekend, Valheim hit a new record of 367,443 concurrent users. If you check out the Steam Charts, you’ll see that this places the game slightly below Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on the charts.
Over time, games may rise and fall on these particular rankings. For example, Counter-Strike and PUBG have been neck and neck in vying for position on the charts. But while it’s impressive to see Steam mainstays like Counter-Strike and PUBG staying so successful, the real story here is how quickly Valheim achieved this level of success.
In other words, it’s impressive enough when a game like Counter-Strike is near the top of the Steam Charts after spending nearly nine years on Steam. However, Valheim is nipping on that game’s heels after being on sale for less than two weeks!
What’s the secret to this sudden success? Other games (such as Among Us) achieved sudden popularity after taking Twitch by Storm. But as near as we can tell, Valheim’s popularity has been entirely organic. As fans tell their friends how fun the game is, it gets to reap the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing.
Of course, things aren’t perfect in the world of Valheim. Developer Iron Gate recently encouraged players to back up their saves in case they encounter a game-breaking bug. The silver lining of this announcement, though, is that the devs are paying close attention to the state of the game and working to make constant improvements.
Have you played Valheim, and do you think it lives up to the hype? Let us know in the comments!