Valheim's Official Release Arrives After Five Years in Early Access

On September 9, 2026, Valheim finally shipped version 1.0 and left Early Access on Steam. Getting here took more than five and a half years, and in that stretch of time a modest Viking survival game turned into one of the genre's biggest phenomena.

Version 1.0 added Deep North, the last biome on the game's roadmap, along with new enemies like the ancient Gammeltrolls. Alongside the full release, Valheim landed on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 for the first time, joining PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S, with full crossplay across all six platforms.

The price for new buyers went up from $19.99 to $29.99. Anyone who already owned a copy before September 9 got the update for free, world saves included, no extra steps needed.

The launch pulled the community's attention right back in. Midweek, at an early morning hour, and Valheim is still pulling strong numbers according to SteamDB:

• 91,332 players online at the time of writing
• 168,093 peak over the last 24 hours

Valheim entered Early Access in February 2021, and what happened next caught almost everyone off guard. The game came out of a small Swedish studio, Iron Gate, which started as a two-person operation and had grown to about five by the time of this launch. Founders Richard Svensson and Henrik Tornqvist had worked together before at Pieces Interactive, and Valheim actually grew out of an unfinished solo project Svensson had been quietly building on the side.

Tiny budget, tiny team, and still the game caused a genuine stir. Within a month it had sold more than five million copies, hit a concurrent peak of 502,387 players, and became one of the most-played titles on Steam that year. Reviewers called it a rare case of Early Access done right, not just another unfinished promise.

Over five and a half years the game sold more than 17 million copies. Ahead of the 1.0 launch, early Metacritic reviews put it at 91, and on Steam it sits around 93-94% positive out of more than 540,000 reviews, a "very positive" rating.

Across those years, Iron Gate kept adding content at a steady drip: new biomes, enemies, gear, building mechanics, and that pace is exactly what kept the game's name as one of the best Early Access stories in the industry. The players did their part too, building up years of their own running jokes and lore along the way. The funniest one might be the Dollar General saga, where one player spent weeks quietly building fluorescent-lit discount stores across a shared server just to torment his friends.