Remember me
Five years ago, at the height of the pandemic that had everyone staying inside and tons of folks playing video games, one of the biggest hits in PC gaming was Valheim — Iron Gate Studios' open-world survival adventure game that launched into Early Access with full support for co-op multiplayer and player-run server hosting.
Set in a mythological Norse purgatory world in which players must conquer the map and its challenges to earn a place in Valhalla, the game's premise — along with its engaging gameplay loops, robust base-building mechanics, and beautiful audiovisual presentation — drew in a peak of over 500,000 concurrent Steam players, with millions of copies sold in just a couple weeks.
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Additionally, the update brings a Unity engine upgrade and a handful of different bugfixes and performance optimizations to Valheim, with Steam Deck users in particular benefitting the most; the game now reaches 60FPS when played with its Performance Mode preset, and all of its preset options have been optimized for battery life.
Over time, developer Iron Gate has significantly expanded Valheim with new content-filled biomes, fresh weapons and armors to craft, extra structure pieces to experiment with while base building, and more. (Image credit: Coffee Stain Publishing)"Today marks the five year anniversary since Valheim was first released into Early Access — and what an incredible five years it’s been," wrote the team at Iron Gate in the update's dedicated blog post.
"We want to thank everyone who has been a part of our journey and our community since then, whether you started playing on day one or have just been carried by the valkyrie for the first time," the studio continued. "We greatly appreciate every single one of you, and we’re so glad to have you walk this path with us."
Notably, the developers are currently working on the game's Deep North update, which is the release that will fully flesh out Valheim's last biome and bring it out of Early Access into a 1.0 state. Iron Gate didn't give any progress updates for Deep North, but did tease that this will be a big year for the title.
"As you all know, we’re working on Deep North, which will be the final biome update that brings the game into 1.0. While we can’t give an update on that today, we can share that 2026 is going to be a great year for Valheim," it said.
Deep North has been widely expected to come out this year, and these comments from the devs give reason to believe that will be the case. Valheim is also scheduled to get its long-awaited PS5 release in 2026, complete with full crossplay support with players on Xbox and Windows PC (including both the Xbox PC app and Steam).
I haven't played Valheim for years, though lately my friends and I have been replaying to check out all the content that's been added over time. With Deep North on the horizon, now is also the perfect time to explore the tenth realm if you're a new player; note that right now, the $20 game is 50% off on Steam, but only for the next 24 hours or so. Snag it cheap while you can!
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Are you a fan of Valheim, or have you not played it yet? What do you think of all the additions and improvements that came in this update? Are you excited for the arrival of the Deep North update and the full launch of version 1.0? Let me know in the comments.
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