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- Valheim’s success took Iron Gate by surprise, as the developer had only one programmer to fix bugs.
- Lead developer Robin Eyre revealed he only expected the title to sell 20,000 copies in early access.
- However, it sold 5 million in just a month, becoming a pop culture phenomenon.
Indie games have championed 2025 so far, with titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 showcasing the immense potential of this niche. However, despite their brilliance, indie titles face significant constraints and limited resources, which necessitate cost reduction.
And, one of the casualties of the indie development culture is Valheim, the Viking-based survival game that was released in 2021 and became a humongous success.
Why This Matters: Valheim’s success in drawing a huge player base and delivering great gameplay shows the incredible talent in indie games, often rivaling big AAA studios.
While talking to GamesRadar at Gamescom, Valheim lead developer Robin Eyre reflected on the game’s success years later and revealed that the studio was unprepared to deal with the game’s breakout success and only had a single developer working on bug fixes for 5 months.
Eyre stated that going into early access, Valheim only had five developers, and they were expecting 20,000 sales. But the title took off, selling a million copies every week for two months, catching developer Iron Gate studio off guard.
“First thing we had to do was make sure that everyone could play the game. So for five months, there was one programmer fixing bugs.”
The studio focused on maintaining high game quality for the millions of Valheim players and tasked one programmer with bug fixes. Robin Eyre expressed his disbelief at the survival game’s popularity, saying he couldn’t have imagined this in his wildest dreams.
Besides millions of sales, Valheim had a massive impact on culture, influencing games like Fortnite to let trees decimate players, something Eyre is very proud of introducing. The game is still in early access years later, but besides Steam, it has made its way to Xbox as a console exclusive.
Just like Sandfall Interactive released a GOTY contender with 30 developers, Valheim’s remarkable critical reception and even more astonishing commercial performance are a testament to the talent in the indie space.
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Shameer Sarfaraz has previously worked for eXputer as a Senior News Writer for several years. Now with Tech4Gamers, he loves to devoutly keep up with the latest gaming and entertainment industries. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and years of experience reporting on games. Besides his passion for breaking news stories, Shahmeer loves spending his leisure time farming away in Stardew Valley. VGC, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, TheGamer, GamingBolt, The Verge, NME, Metro, Dot Esports, GameByte, Kotaku Australia, PC Gamer, and more have cited his articles.
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