VALHEIM
Viking invasion
How unexpected smash hit Valheim went from one developer to five million players
You know the tune by now: a game appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and grabs hold of the zeitgeist for a minute, pushing ahead of far more established titles and maybe breaking a record or two along the way. Among Us. Fall Guys. Phasmophobia. And, latest to join the chorus, Valheim –a Viking survival game that, this February, joined the exclusive club of games to hit 500,000 concurrent players on Steam.
It’s an achievement only ever matched by four other titles: PUBG, CS:GO, Dota 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. And in stark contrast to its new peers, Valheim is a debut release from a Swedish studio with a headcount of five. At the outset of development, the team consisted of one person: Richard Svensson.
Svensson quit his job as lead programmer at Pieces Interactive in early 2018, as it was being acquired by THQ Nordic. He had an idea he’d been toying with in his spare time, and decided it deserved his full attention. “Richard started working on Valheim, without any income, basically full time,” recalls Henrik Törnqvist, a former colleague who was convinced to join Svensson in late 2018.