Update: Valheim Reaches Simultaneous Player Record for Survival Game on Steam

Valheim has now surpassed Terraria’s all-time high concurrent player record, with 502,397 players peaking on February 21. That means it has a concurrent player record for most survival games on Steam. At the time, he was the second most played player on Steam, behind Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This means that Valheim now has the fifth highest concurrent player of any game on Steam, behind PUBG, Counter- Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Cyberpunk 2077, Valheim is already almost the greatest survival game ever made on Steam, and it’s not even a fortnight ago.

On February 14, Valheim reached an all-time high of 367,443 players on Steam, just two weeks after its release on February 2. Compared to the most popular survival games on Steam, this makes it the fastest growing game of its genre. Its main genre rivals, Rust and ARK: Survival Evolve, cannot boast of such a high number of competitors in their entire lifetimes, and only reached comparable heights years after launch.

The only obstacle for Valheim to claim the crown of ‘most simultaneous players in a survival game’ is the all-time record held by Terraria, which hit 489,886 players in May 2020. It should be noted that this was a short and unusual spike caused by the announcement and launch of the latest Terraria update. On a typical day, Terraria attracts around 30-50,000 players, its highest peak being on June 29, 2015, with 159,171 players. As such, Valheim is already taller than Terraria has been for most of his life.

For a better comparison, look at the two survival games that remain almost cemented near the top of the List of most played players on Steam; Rust and ARK. Despite its early access launch in 2014, Rust only affected more than 100,000 concurrent players as of March 2020. ARK had a much faster trajectory; after its launch in June 2105, it hit over 100,000 concurrent players in January 2017. ARK’s all-time high is 157,400, which it hit in March 2020. Rust, meanwhile, peaked record of 245,243 in January 2021.

This puts Valheim’s growth far ahead of its gender competition, and more in tune with the viral explosion of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. But even PUBG, which launched in March 2017, took three months to reach more than Valheim’s current concurrent player record, peaking at the time of 382,779 concurrent on July 10, 2017.

This means that the only games that are truly comparable, in terms of numbers, are the major AAA titles. But these games tend to peak immediately on launch, and then decline rapidly. Indeed, the curve of Cyberpunk 2077 is essentially the complete reverse of that of Valheim. The RPG started life at an all time high of over a million players, but had fewer players than Valheim currently has in a fortnight.

Due to AAA, Valheim cannot claim to be the fastest growing game on Steam. But it’s certainly one of the platform’s biggest independent success stories, if not the biggest. It’s especially remarkable how close this all is to launch; while Among us Has an all-time high at 447,476, it took over a year for the game to catch on, spending much of its life with just a few hundred players. Among Us was also fueled by the culture of streamers, which was not a notable part of Valheim’s success. From what we can see, there is no other survival game on Steam that has had such a remarkable launch.

To learn more about this massive Early Access success, take a look at our essential tips for playing Valheim.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK news and entertainment editor.