Valheim Developer Says Early Access Release Was Due to Lack of Funds

Development on Valheim did not stop with version 1.0. The team continues to release updates, though these currently focus primarily on bug fixes and gameplay balance adjustments.

Valheim creator Richard Svensson shared that launching the game in Steam Early Access in 2021 was his only reasonable way out due to a lack of money. According to him, the project likely would not have achieved comparable success without this distribution model, and interacting with players helped shape the future direction of development.

Valheim was released in Steam Early Access in February 2021. At the time, developer Richard Svensson was working on the game almost entirely by himself and needed to find a way to keep production going. As he told GamesIndustry.biz, he simply ran out of funds for further development.

During the first month after release, Valheim sold more than five million copies. Since then, sales of the game have reached 17 million units. Despite the success, the developer is not in a hurry to significantly expand the team, even though the current production scale is incomparable to what it was at the start of early access.

However, as Svensson points out, he would have released the game in early access even without financial difficulties. The ability to launch the project gradually and receive feedback from the community became one of the main factors in Valheim’s success.

Early access allows you to establish direct interaction with the audience and understand what people really expect from the project, Svensson says.