Valheim, a Viking survival game made by a team of just five, has sold two million copies in under two weeks. That’s… carry the five… divide by nine… a million copies a week!
It was only Friday that Nathan wrote a post celebrating the Norse nerve-wracker, an article so good I had the game installing before I was halfway through reading. Turns out I was joining rather a large crowd.
It’s fair to say things are going quite well for first-time indie team Iron Gate. Releasing the game into Steam’s Early Access a couple of Tuesdays ago, it’s since gone on to sell over two million copies, the developers revealed in a post today.
Their glee is rather joyful to behold. “Everyone at Iron Gate has really been appreciating all the messages, love, questions and thoughts from all of you, so please keep them coming!” they say. “And again, a big thank you to all of you for helping us reach this ridiculous milestone in under two weeks of sailing onto Early Access.”
“Forget longboats,” Iron Gate add, deciding to drop some history on us. “[We] have now blown a 700+ year old record by boasting the largest Viking population in all of human history. For reference, the previous peak in Viking numbers was set in 1300 AD and was approximately 500,000.”
In fact, they came damned close to a live reunion, with a 360,000 concurrent players over the weekend. And this is less than a fortnight into a planned year-long Early Access development. My back-of-a-Google maths estimates about $US28m coming in to them and Coffee Stain Publishing, after you take off Valve’s hefty tithe. Which is pretty life-changing money.
I find it rather thrilling that this can still happen on Steam. It seemed for a moment there that the days of a The Stanley Parable-type overnight indie success were over, until the more recent sudden success of the likes of Among Us and Fall Guys. Kudos, Iron Gate. Just don’t go mad, but definitely do buy a castle.
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